IBT participation in the conference “The Role of Religion in the Turkic Culture”
September 24, 2015

The first international conference on “The Role of Religion in the Turkic Culture” (Budapest, 9-11 September) gathered scholars from around the world to exchange papers about the interaction of religion and society among the Turkic peoples of Eurasia, both past and present.  Presentations dealt with issues relevant to the religions that have been espoused at one time or another by various Turkic peoples -- Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Tengrianism and Manicheism . Among these presentations was a poster presentation and talk on “Bible translations into Turkic languages in post-Soviet countries”, given by IBT director Vitaly Voinov and SIL-affiliated Feruza Krason. Voinov and Krason described the current progress in Bible translation into the Turkic languages of Russia and the CIS, and laid out some of the social, cultural, and linguistic ramifications of BT projects in these languages. They also presented two brief case studies on how BT activity is affecting society in Tuva (first Tuvan Bible printed by IBT in 2011) and Uzbekistan (IBT’s Uzbek Bible expected in 2016).  Comments from the audience following the presentation give hope that more Turkic-language scholars will make use of IBT’s translations, many of which are freely available in both text and audio on the IBT website.