“We were fortunate to visit the very spot where several thousand years ago Abraham may have stood looking at the place that God chose for him to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac,” one of the participants of the study tour to Israel exclaimed emotionally. The trip was specially organized for IBT’s Bible translators from the Caucasus by the Jerusalem Center for Bible Translators. Each of these translators already had serious experience in Bible translation work. Some of them had translated quite a few books of the Bible, to say nothing of the annual training seminars, workshops, and tons of literature they read… All of that was an important school indeed. But only a school, whereas the study trip to Israel was described by one of the participants as “a university for Bible translators!”
In Altai historical epics, we frequently come across the following plot: people who have been enslaved and are being driven into a foreign land hang a cradle with a baby on a tree branch in the hope that someone will find and raise their child. Does this sound similar to a well-known story from the Bible?
At the Institute for Bible Translation we are always reflecting upon the importance of translating the Bible into people’s “heart language”. But what do we usually think of when we speak about one’s heart language? The first idea that comes to mind is that this is the language that a person speaks in his or her daily life, the language that is the easiest and most natural one for conveying meaning to other people. It is interesting that the more we talk with representatives of different people groups and cultures who are working with IBT in Bible translation or Scripture engagement, the more this seemingly obvious picture becomes blurred and loses its defined contours. Surprisingly so! It seems more likely that the concept of “heart language” goes beyond the language itself and involves the whole cultural worldview and the layer of deepest emotions and childhood or even genetic memories...
In this newsletter we would like to share with you a fascinating story, which truly happened in one of our Muslim projects. We will not name this people group explicitly, so that the lives of our protagonists would not be endangered. Right now we have two translators in this project, let us call them Eve and Joseph (not their real names). But it was not always like this. Many years ago Eve was the only translator. She devoted 15 years of her life to Bible translation, though she is not a Christian. There are no known Christians among the representatives of her people group. Not even a single one. Like the majority of her kinspeople, she is from a Muslim background. She is a journalist and a good specialist in her mother tongue.
Winter 2015-2016 Newsletter on what is common between the Kyrgyz epic story and the Bible
Probably any nation or people group, or at least the majority of them, have their heroic epics, but only a few of them can claim that their national epic is rooted in Biblical history. One of those few is the Kyrgyz people. An IBT Kyrgyz translator shares what he finds in common between the Kyrgyz epic story and the Bible. “The Kyrgyz epic is the largest in the world and we have much pride in it. It is called “Manas”. I’ve come to the conclusion that some storylines in Manas can be traced back to Bible plots. For example...
“We were fortunate to visit the very spot where several thousand years ago Abraham may have stood looking at the place that God chose for him to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac,” one of the participants of the study tour to Israel exclaimed emotionally. The trip was specially organized for IBT’s Bible translators from the Caucasus by the Jerusalem Center for Bible Translators. Each of these translators already had serious experience in Bible translation work. Some of them had translated quite a few books of the Bible, to say nothing of the annual training seminars, workshops, and tons of literature they read… All of that was an important school indeed. But only a school, whereas the study trip to Israel was described by one of the participants as “a university for Bible translators!”
In Altai historical epics, we frequently come across the following plot: people who have been enslaved and are being driven into a foreign land hang a cradle with a baby on a tree branch in the hope that someone will find and raise their child. Does this sound similar to a well-known story from the Bible?
At the Institute for Bible Translation we are always reflecting upon the importance of translating the Bible into people’s “heart language”. But what do we usually think of when we speak about one’s heart language? The first idea that comes to mind is that this is the language that a person speaks in his or her daily life, the language that is the easiest and most natural one for conveying meaning to other people. It is interesting that the more we talk with representatives of different people groups and cultures who are working with IBT in Bible translation or Scripture engagement, the more this seemingly obvious picture becomes blurred and loses its defined contours. Surprisingly so! It seems more likely that the concept of “heart language” goes beyond the language itself and involves the whole cultural worldview and the layer of deepest emotions and childhood or even genetic memories...
In this newsletter we would like to share with you a fascinating story, which truly happened in one of our Muslim projects. We will not name this people group explicitly, so that the lives of our protagonists would not be endangered. Right now we have two translators in this project, let us call them Eve and Joseph (not their real names). But it was not always like this. Many years ago Eve was the only translator. She devoted 15 years of her life to Bible translation, though she is not a Christian. There are no known Christians among the representatives of her people group. Not even a single one. Like the majority of her kinspeople, she is from a Muslim background. She is a journalist and a good specialist in her mother tongue.
Probably any nation or people group, or at least the majority of them, have their heroic epics, but only a few of them can claim that their national epic is rooted in Biblical history. One of those few is the Kyrgyz people. An IBT