Bible translations into Turkish

Old translation

The Bible was first translated into Ottoman Turkish in the 17th century by Wojciech Bobowski, a Polish convert to Islam. He is more commonly known as Ali Ufki, Albertus Bobovius, and Ali Bey. Ali Ufki worked with a Dutch group undertaking language translations of the Bible coordinated by John Amos Comenius and Levinus Warner. While it is agreed amongst scholars Ali Ufki had likely completed his translation prior to 1666, the completed version remained an unpublished manuscript for over 150 years; the New Testament from his manuscript was first printed in Paris in 1819, then revised and printed with the Old Testament in 1827.

An English chaplain named William Seaman completed and published a translation of the New Testament into Ottoman Turkish in 1666. His edition was partly commissioned and organised by Robert Boyle. Boyle and Seaman worked distantly with the literary undertaking employing Ali Ufki in Holland, with Henry Oldenburg keeping communication between the two projects. Oldenburg had hoped to unite the two projects, Ali Ufki and William Seaman undertaking the Old and New Testament respectively, however this did not come to fruition, as, amongst other difficulties, particular strains on their collaboration came with the death of Warner in 1665. Seaman's translation holds the title of the oldest printed and published Turkic translation of the New Testament.

While William Seaman's translation of the Bible holds a significant place in literary history as the first book to be printed entirely in Turkish, contemporaries of his time (Ali Ufki included) and scholarly critics note the many errors and syntax difficulties present in his work. Comenius stated, “The errors of the translation are apparently rustic and barbarous; not one of the more educated Turks will be able to read it."

Seaman's translation has fallen out of favour with modern critics, who note more typical seventeenth-century Turkish in Ali Ufki's translation. For example, Seaman's use of the word "eyitdi" instead of "söyledi" or "dedi" is rarely found in Ali Ufki's version, which was written during the same era.

A new translation was published in Constantinople in 1878 and entitled Kitab-ı Mukaddes ("Holy Book"). Revised several times, this was the only Bible in the Arabic alphabet of Ottoman Turkish that stayed in print until the end of the Ottoman period.

In addition, Armeno-Turkish and Graeco-Turkish Bibles were produced in the Turkish spoken by these Ottoman minority peoples and written in their very different alphabets.

Seraphim Khojentzi translated the New Testament which was published by the Russian Bible Society in 1819. This edition used Armenian script.