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 Since September 2026, incremental draft generation is enabled for all projects, so teams can also draft in smaller steps as their translated material grows.^3 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.^4
The scale is growing, and the effect is now measured. More than 600 projects have been onboarded to Scripture Forge. In a study published by the ETEN Innovation Lab in February 2026, SIL researchers mined Paratext project history for 75 projects where AI drafting was visibly integrated into real translation work, and found those projects reached the drafted stage roughly twice as fast as comparable projects and moved through review about 25% faster, completing about 1,000 more reviewed verses per project over 12 months.^5
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.^6 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.^6
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^4
"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^7
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 4,493 commits, the latest on October 26, 2026^8
- Works on mobile and desktop; supports offline functionality with automatic sync^2
- AI drafting was implemented or in preparation in nearly 500 translation projects worldwide as of mid-2025^7
- Incremental draft generation enabled for all projects in September 2026^3
- Help documentation available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and Indonesian^9
- 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^10
- 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^3
- Actively maintained with frequent releases through October 2026, including the ability for translators to configure the sources used for generating drafts^3
- Featured in Wycliffe.net's special report on AI and Bible translation (June 2025)^7
- Studied by the ETEN Innovation Lab, whose February 2026 analysis of Paratext data found AI drafting roughly doubled drafting speed in the projects it examined^5
