Kàddug Yàlla

The Kàddug Yàlla ("Word of God") is the Wolof Bible translated by the Mission Baptiste du Sénégal (MBS), copyright 2025. Wolof is Senegal's great shared language, spoken far beyond those who have it as a first language. The same text is on biblewolof.com and in the mission's apps.

We found no detailed public account of its method. The text uses Wolof's Latin orthography, with marks such as à, ë and ñ, and reads as current Wolof: Psalm 23 opens with Aji Sax jee may sàmm, "the Lord is the one who shepherds me". The mission guards the form of the text carefully: it asks for samples before approving any recording, so that an odd accent does not undercut the credibility of Scripture.

It serves Wolof speakers who want the whole Bible in the language of daily life, not the language of school. The honest limit is that this is a very recent edition, without years of church use to show where it needs adjusting. And many Wolof speakers learned to read in French, so sustained reading in Wolof may take some getting used to.

The rights holder released the text under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license, and the mission also forbids mixing this text with other Wolof translations without permission. It allows anyone to read and share it for free, as long as the text stays unaltered and is not used commercially. That is why the Kàddug Yàlla is here in full to read for free on Midvash, but is left out of the public API, audio and AI features, which would go beyond what the license allows.