Louis Segond
fr
The Bible translation known as Louis Segond (LSG) is the most widely used French Protestant Bible and one of the most important translations in the history of the French-speaking church. Its 1910 revision remains in print, in worship and in daily reading more than a century later.
History and Context of the Translation
Louis Segond (1810-1885) was a Swiss theologian and pastor, professor of Old Testament at the University of Geneva and a scholar of Hebrew and Greek. In 1865 the Company of Pastors of Geneva commissioned him to produce a new French translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew. He completed it in 1874, and translated the New Testament from the Greek himself, publishing it in 1880. The complete Bible followed in 1880.
The translation appeared in a French Protestantism served largely by versions descended from Olivétan's sixteenth-century Bible, whose language had aged. Segond's work offered nineteenth-century French of real literary quality alongside serious philological scholarship. A revision published in 1910, after his death, became the standard text and is what most readers mean by "the Segond" today; further revisions followed, including the Nouvelle Édition de Genève (1979) and Segond 21 (2007).
Translation Methodology
Segond worked from the original languages with a strongly philological approach, seeking fidelity to the Hebrew and Greek while writing clear, well-formed French. The Old Testament follows the Masoretic Text; the New Testament follows the Greek text as established by the textual scholarship of his day. His method is broadly one of formal equivalence, close to the wording of the original but not slavishly literal — a balance that accounts for its long life.
Distinctive Features
- Literary French: the prose is precise and dignified, and much of its vocabulary has become the shared idiom of French-speaking Protestantism.
- Fidelity to the original: the translation stays close to the Hebrew and Greek structures, which makes it useful for study.
- Public domain: the 1910 text is free of copyright, which has carried it into countless print editions, software packages and websites.
- A common reference: as the KJV does in English, the Segond supplies the phrasing by which French-speaking Protestants recognise and memorise Scripture.
Use and Importance
The Segond is the principal Bible of Reformed, evangelical and Baptist churches across France, Switzerland, Belgium, Quebec and francophone Africa. It is used for preaching, catechesis and personal reading, and it underlies a large body of French-language concordances, commentaries and study tools.
Contemporary Relevance
Newer French translations exist, some in more contemporary language, but the Segond retains its place. Its public-domain status keeps it available everywhere at no cost, and its familiarity keeps it in the ear of the French-speaking church — the version its readers quote from memory.