If you've ever wondered how the Bible gets translated into a language that doesn't yet have it, Scripture Forge is one of the tools making it happen. Built by SIL International — the organization behind Paratext, the world's leading Bible translation software — Scripture Forge is a free, open-source web application that helps translation teams draft, edit, and check Scripture collaboratively, from anywhere in the world.^1
At its core, Scripture Forge does three things. First, it offers AI-powered draft generation — once a project has enough previously translated Scripture (roughly a complete New Testament), the system can generate rough drafts for new books, giving translators a meaningful head start.^2 Second, its collaborative editing environment integrates directly with Paratext, keeping everyone on the same page without the headache of reconciling conflicting versions.^1 Third, its Community Checking tool lets translation teams invite non-Paratext users — including heart-language speakers in diaspora communities around the globe — to review translations, leave comments, and answer comprehension questions via text or audio recording.^3
The scale is remarkable: as of mid-2025, Scripture Forge's AI drafting is implemented or in preparation in nearly 500 translation projects worldwide, and about 500 languages are now using AI-assisted drafting across the Bible translation movement.^4 Paratext data from September 2024 to September 2025 showed that projects using Scripture Forge's draft generation were able to draft and review an average of 1,000 more verses than projects that didn't.^2
Underneath is Serval, an open-source, platform-independent AI model developed by SIL that learns each team's completed work to produce first drafts of new passages. Teams retain full creative and theological oversight — AI accelerates drafting but never replaces the human judgment that ensures faithful, accurate, community-owned Scripture.^10 A growing frontier is Oral Bible Translation (OBT): a multi-step initiative led by Faith Comes By Hearing and SIL is piloting an end-to-end AI workflow that records spoken Scripture, transcribes it, drafts via Serval inside Scripture Forge, and re-renders the result as spoken audio — opening AI-assisted drafting to oral-first language communities that previously had no written Scripture.^10
Why Translators Love It"It was so easy! All I had to do to get started was log in using my Paratext registration and boom! It was all there. Right away I chose a verse and wrote a checking question for it. Then I also recorded myself asking that checking question. It's so great that feedback can be gathered either way." — Trevor Deck, SIL Global Diaspora Specialist^1
"Community Checking allows translation teams to engage more easily with more participants from the language community. It gives the whole community a way to be more confident in the final translation by participating in discussions about translation decisions." — JoEllen Magnus, Scripture Forge Business Analyst^3
"AI fundamentally transforms the translation paradigm — elevating mother tongue translators' roles from drafting to critical evaluation and refinement of AI-generated drafts." — Dr. Taeho Jang, Global Bible Translators^4
Notable- Built and maintained by SIL International (the organization behind Paratext and Wycliffe's technical arm)
- Fully open source under the MIT license on GitHub — actively maintained with 4,200+ commits and the latest commit on the same day as this writing^6
- Works on mobile and desktop; supports offline functionality with automatic sync
- AI drafting now live in nearly 500 projects worldwide as of mid-2025^4
- Help documentation available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and Indonesian^7
- Subject of an academic paper at the biennial Bible Translation Conference on integrating Scripture Forge into translation projects — covering practical workflows, common misconceptions, and the ethical balance between machine assistance and human translator expertise^11
- In May 2026, SIL announced the retirement of the older statistical machine translation tool later this year, consolidating AI-assisted drafting onto the newer Serval-powered draft generation feature^8
- Actively maintained with frequent releases through June 2026 (v5.58.0)^8
- Featured in Wycliffe.net's special report on AI and Bible translation (June 2025)^4
- Listed as a resource by ETEN Innovation Lab for Bible translation technology^9
