Thanks to our amazing community of translation volunteers, YouVersion.com and the Bible App’s interface on iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch), Android, and bada are now entirely available in Japanese. (And coming soon: Java devices!) If you already have the Bible App on a supported device, simply set the default language for your device to Japanese. And if you have the latest update of the Bible App for iOS or Android, you can even select Japanese directly in your Bible App Settings!
While we offer Bibles in nearly 300 different languages, Japanese is the fourteenth language YouVersion has launched across several platforms, including Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, German, and French, among others. For this launch, besides menus and controls, we’ve also added 25 reading plans in Japanese. With a population of around 127 million people, Japan has more than 120 million cell phones and 99 million Internet users, representing a tremendous opportunity to reach people with God’s Word. If you have friends whose preferred language is Japanese, please share this great news with them—and please help us spread the word on Facebook and Twitter.
Of course, making Japanese language options available across multiple YouVersion platforms wouldn’t be possible without help from our incredible YouVersion community. It can only happen when people who are passionate about sharing God’s Word share their gifts in translation with the world. And because we’re constantly improving the Bible App—and we’d like to offer even more—there’s always translation to do. If you can volunteer to translate into Japanese, we’d love to hear from you. Please join us. You’ll be helping the world fall in love with God’s Word.
What’s it like to use your gifts to help YouVersion reach the world? We asked one of our key Japanese language volunteers to share some of her thoughts with you:
“As I live away from Japan, I don’t have many opportunities to directly share the Word with people in Japan. But being a part of the Japanese translation team enabled me to take part in spreading God’s word in a very unique way. The Word of God is powerful, as said in Isaiah: ‘As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.’”
—Tomomi G., Seattle, WA, U.S.A.