According to the Ensign, the scriptures are “available in languages spoken by more than 95 percent of Church membership.” This is an incredibly high percentage. The Church has done an amazing job of translating the scriptures into languages that are widely spoken.

But this percentage can be a bit misleading since in that 95 percent, many non-native language speakers are included. Second language speakers in some cases are comfortable reading the Book of Mormon in that language, but that often isn’t the case. Is Russian good enough for all of the former Soviet Union? Is English good enough for all the Philippines and India? I don’t think so.

This percentage is also more likely to include men. Throughout the world, men are more likely to learn the official languages like English and Russian and French than women are simply because men have more interaction with a wider variety of people. Sometimes the only access women have to the scriptures is through their husbands or male leaders.

There are wards and branches in many places in the world where the members speak one language all week, using it for visiting teaching and home teaching and family home evening, but then use an entirely different language on Sunday at church. And that language used at church is usually a more formal language- one that might be used for education or business instead of spiritual experiences.

There also can be a real stigma associated with second languages. For example, Russian is widely spoken in Latvia, but missionary work in Latvia was severly hindered before the Latvian Book of Mormon was available because Russian is not particularly appreciated in Latvia.

I don’t deny that translations into second languages are often adequate and usually the best that can be done. But it’s not ideal and these are only a few of the reasons why.

Of course it is simply impossible right now to translate the Book of Mormon into even a tenth of the over 6000 languages in the world. I understand that there are huge obstacles in translation. I am glad to see some more creative ideas used recently. For example, you might have noticed that Preach My Gospel has already been translated into a large number of languages despite its being a rather recent publication. Much of the translation work done on Preach My Gospel was done by non-LDS translation firms and then reviewed by native speakers. This seems to have worked well.

I also understand that languages that don’t yet have many LDS speakers aren’t always a top priority (although I am constantly amazed at variety of Russian-language materials available when there are relatively few Russian speakers). But some of these smaller languages may never have the numbers of members needed to get translations going. An excellent job has been done in getting the scriptures to the majority. Now it seems to be the time to focus on the few.