The Tsakhur people are indigenous to the Caucasus region, historically residing in southern Dagestan and northern Azerbaijan (about 25,000 people in all, according to censuses taken in 2009 and 2010). They profess Sunni Islam. Their language belongs to the Lezgic family of the Nakh-Dagestanian group of North Caucasian languages.

IBT held a translation workshop on two of the Minor Prophets via Zoom on June 11-18. This was the first time in IBT’s history that one of our workshops has been conducted as a webinar.

The online format of this workshop was necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic and the related quarantine measures. Nevertheless, its advantages quickly became apparent. Many IBT translators are university instructors, and for them, June is traditionally a very busy time, full of summer courses and entrance exams. Translation team members who would not have been able to come to Moscow for a face-to-face seminar were still able to find time in their busy academic schedules for full participation in the virtual workshop.

IBT has published a unique collection of Orthodox liturgical texts in the Kyrgyz language, including musical notation for performance. This is IBT’s first-ever publication of this kind. Most of the 1,000 copies printed will go to the Kyrgyz diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bishkek, since this edition was produced in response to a request of Bishop Daniel of the Kyrgyz diocese. Translation of liturgical texts, which are designed for communal singing to melodies well known in the Orthodox world, demanded that the translation team acquire a completely new set of skills. Special attention had to be paid not only to accuracy in the translation, but also to sound collocations and rhythmic patterns...

IBT is pleased to announce that the Old Testament books of Ruth and Esther have been published in the Abaza language in a single edition. The first IBT publication in Abaza came out in 2019 – an illustrated translation of the book of Jonah, with a parallel Russian translation.

The Abaza language belongs to the Abkhaz-Abaza branch of the Abkhaz-Adyge group of Caucasian languages. L.I. Lavrov, one of the first researchers of the history of the Abaza people, notes that they were once a large people, with their own centuries-old history. Scholars believe that the Abaza and Abkhaz languages...

The Institute for Bible Translation has just expanded its Dungan-language Stories of the Prophets series with two publications that tell the stories of Moses and Jonah. This series relates the Biblical narratives about the greatest prophets that are revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike.
The first installment of the series, Noah, appeared in 2016, followed by the stories of Abraham and Joseph in 2019. The Dungan stories are accompanied by a parallel Russian text and colorful illustrations produced by the talented Dungan artist Khalida Shimova. The biblical characters in these stories appear just as the Dungan reader would imagine them, in their own cultural environment and dressed in their traditional clothing. To aid the reading experience, each book is accompanied by an audio CD with a Dungan recording of the text. This is available on the IBT website in the audio recordings section.