One of the most recent IBT publications is the Gospel of John in Nenets together with an audio recording. The story of this publication is a striking example of how life in Christ inspires the establishment of links with people who may feel alienated due to their different cultural background, language or social position. Such relationships are, after all, the first fruits of the coming of God's Kingdom, where human barriers are irrelevant...
When the members of the Yakut team came to the IBT Moscow office for the audio recording of Psalms, it was not at all an easy task for them. Our translator Sargylana suffered from problems with her voice, while the well-known Yakut poet Mikhail Dyachkovsky, who lives in Moscow, came to the IBT office to do the audio recording with a broken arm. Still, together they managed to do excellent work, and the Psalms were audio recorded in two versions...
"The Holy Scripture is always a source of inspiration. You cannot learn it once and for all like a multiplication table, and then put it aside and simply recall it at need. When you come into contact with this Book, when you read it or look it through, you always see something that you have not noticed beforehand. Now we are at the point of starting the translation of John. It must be difficult, but we have already entered the water. There will be hidden reefs of course, but we will not tread on the ground – we shall walk on the water!”
“The mill turns as the wind turns” was a proverbial expression that Fr. Cosmas, an Orthodox monk from the USA, could not make any sense of when he first came across it in a Gagauz story that he was reading. Fr. Cosmas’s life story is in itself worthy of attention, but what is important for us here is that Fr. Cosmas is now an exegetical advisor in training for the IBT Gagauz project.
Spring 2014 Newsletter on the Kabardian and Adyghe projects
Don't biblical texts sometimes seem contradictory? And isn't it these very contradictions that make them relevant to all people, regardless of their ethnic, linguistic or historical contexts? The Bible is not abstract ideology, but rather a practical source of life, springing from God Himself, who is Love. Whoever reads the books of Job, Ecclesiastes or Proverbs as ideology may be at a loss. Whoever reads them from within real human situations may taste their all-embracing character. Likewise, the messages from the two translation teams, Adyghe and Kabardian, whose members gathered for a discussion at the recent IBT seminar on the Wisdom and Poetic books of the Old Testament at first seemed contradictory.
One of the most recent IBT publications is the Gospel of John in Nenets together with an audio recording. The story of this publication is a striking example of how life in Christ inspires the establishment of links with people who may feel alienated due to their different cultural background, language or social position. Such relationships are, after all, the first fruits of the coming of God's Kingdom, where human barriers are irrelevant...
When the members of the 
"The Holy Scripture is always a source of inspiration. You cannot learn it once and for all like a multiplication table, and then put it aside and simply recall it at need. When you come into contact with this Book, when you read it or look it through, you always see something that you have not noticed beforehand. Now we are at the point of starting the translation of John. It must be difficult, but we have already entered the water. There will be hidden reefs of course, but we will not tread on the ground – we shall walk on the water!”
“The mill turns as the wind turns” was a proverbial expression that Fr. Cosmas, an Orthodox monk from the USA, could not make any sense of when he first came across it in a Gagauz story that he was reading. Fr. Cosmas’s life story is in itself worthy of attention, but what is important for us here is that Fr. Cosmas is now an exegetical advisor in training for the IBT Gagauz project.
Don't biblical texts sometimes seem contradictory? And isn't it these very contradictions that make them relevant to all people, regardless of their ethnic, linguistic or historical contexts? The Bible is not abstract ideology, but rather a practical source of life, springing from God Himself, who is Love. Whoever reads the books of Job, Ecclesiastes or Proverbs as ideology may be at a loss. Whoever reads them from within real human situations may taste their all-embracing character. Likewise, the messages from the two translation teams, Adyghe and Kabardian, whose members gathered for a discussion at the recent IBT seminar on the Wisdom and Poetic books of the Old Testament at first seemed contradictory.