If you know that the Bible is the most translated book of all time, then it should come to no surprise that the most widely translated movie (and, according to The
New York Times and the BBC, the most watched movie of all time) is 1979’s «Jesus» (or, «The Jesus Film»), directed by Peter Sykes and John Krish.
In 1980, American evangelist Bill Bright created the ‘Jesus Film Project’ organization, with the purpose of distributing the film as far as possible, covering as
many languages as they could and even showing it to many populations who until then had never even seen a motion picture before.
As of this writing, «Jesus» has been translated to 1977 languages, and according to statistics, has been viewed more than 8 billion times by 4 billion people,
crushing the view counts of the second most watched film, «Titanic» (1997), which only has a paltry 300 million.
It is safe to say that translation played a massive role in expanding the reach of «The Jesus Film», and should be used as an example in the sheer power of translation.
