Bible translations into Tibetan

[5][6] The Moravian missionary H. A. Jäschke (1817–1883) spent three months in Ladakh in 1857, and subsequently worked in Keylong (Lahul) until 1868.

He hoped that his choice of language would ensure that the written text would be widely understood across Tibet and the Himalayan border regions.

Between 1898 and 1902, a committee chaired by another Moravian missionary A. W. Heyde (1825–1907) prepared a revised version of the Tibetan New Testament under the sponsorship of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

[7] In 1959, Eliyah Tsetan Phuntsog (son-in-law of Yoseb Gergan) [7] started to revise the New Testament with Pierre Vittoz (a Swiss missionary).

They translated it into a Mid Literary register, hoping that this would be accessible to the various Tibetan-speaking peoples in both India and Tibet.

[8][9] A translation of the New Testament into modern "low literary" Tibetan, often called the Central Tibetan Bible (CTB), and released in 2018 under the subheading ༄༅།།འཛམ་གླིང་མཐའ་གྲུ་གསལ་བའི་འོད་སྣང་། (Wylie: 'dzam gling mtha' gru gsal ba'i 'od snang) "Radiant Light to the Ends of the Earth", and printed by Central Asia Publishing, as well as being available digitally.

He noticed that the Ladakhi Christians were more attentive when listening to the Harmony, than they were when they heard texts written in the High Register of Classical Tibetan.

[7] These early vernacular translations adapted the classical literary spelling system rather than using a phonetic transcription of spoken Ladakhi.

[14] However, he ran into opposition from a segment of the Ladakhi community who wanted to preserve the classical spelling system of the Buddhist Scriptures.

[14] Today there is an ongoing project to translate the complete Bible into the low register of spoken Ladakhi (Zhung/Leh dialect)[11] using a more phonemic spelling structure.