The world's most widely translated book has added another language to its collection: the Australian aboriginal tongue Kriol.

The first fully translated Bible in Kriol is making its way across Australia, after the completion of a long-running, joint project by several groups, including the Anglican Church, the Bible Society and the Australian Society of Indigenous Languages.

Kriol, originally considered a form of pidgin English, is the most widely spoken indigenous language in Australia but the project still took 27 years to complete.

Staff encountered daunting translation work despite the language's similarities with English.

"It sometimes sounds as if Kriol words are English words, but often they have a different meaning," Margaret Mickan, one of the project's co-ordinators, told CBC News.

"[We] have to be careful on both sides … that we don't just think 'Oh, this is the same as the English word.'"

Kriol developed when European settlers mingled with the indigenous people in the north part of Australia in the late 19th century.

Imparting cultural meaning and an indigenous sensibility to the Bible's text — avoiding simply a literal translation — was also a challenge to the team.

According to linguist Peter Carroll, translating a phrase like "to love God with all one's heart" proved particularly difficult because of how Kriol speakers express themselves.

They "use a different part of the body to express emotions," Carroll said.

"So 'to love God with all your heart' was 'to want God with all your insides.' And it was that use of the word — 'insides' not the word of 'heart' — that established the right connection with emotions and made the translations effective."

The Anglican Church is working to distribute the newly translated Bible — also the first complete Bible translation in an Australian aboriginal language ever — across the country's northern regions, where the majority of the approximately 30,000 Kriol speakers live.