The most translated movie in cinema history
Where would the world of cinema be without the art of translation? Just think of all the glorious works of world cinema that movie fans would not have been able to enjoy if it were for the hard work and diligence of translators, bringing the artistry of one language to another.
Thankfully, through the tireless efforts of translators all across the world, we’ve been able to see some of our favourite non-English-language movies and vice versa. There are scores upon scores of translated movies, but when it comes to the movie that has been translated the most, there can only be one winner, and that prestigious title goes to the 1979 Biblical drama film Jesus, directed by Peter Sykes and John Krish and produced by John Heyman.
The film tells of the life of Jesus Christ by using the Gospel of Luke as its main narrative and also features a voice-over narration, which arrives at certain moments throughout the runtime. Jesus was shot mostly in Israel, having been predominantly financed by the Campus Crusade for Christ with a $6million budget.
Skyes and Krish’s movie is often called the most-watched work of cinema ever made, and back in 2020, it was estimated that the film had been watched over 8.1 billion times by over four billion people, although, of course, the official statistics for this metric would be incredibly difficult to acquire.
However, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, Jesus is indeed the ‘Most Translated Film’ in history, having been translated and made available for viewing in 1,977 languages as of May 2022, with several other languages planned for future releases.
The executive director of The Jesus Film Project, Erick Schenkel, once spoke of the film’s global popularity, noting that both non-English speakers and non-believers “saw Jesus speaking their language, they understood that Jesus saw them and loved them… And so we saw movements of people coming to Christ in every one of these people groups”.
Schenkel added: “[In] 35 years, there have [been] 6 billion viewings of the film, and over 200 million people have indicated they wanted to become followers of Jesus after seeing the film. So the reach is just more than we could have asked, and it really has been a privilege to see how God has used this tool.”
Check out the trailer for Jesus, the most translated movie of all time, below.
