Russian
January 17, 2024

IBT released two editions in the Abkhaz language: the Book of the Jonah and "Gospel Parables".

The Abkhaz are the indigenous population of Abkhazia (122 2000 people, census 2011). According to the 2020 census 8,177 Abkhaz live in Russia. The Abkhaz language belongs to the Abkhaz-Adyg language family.

The book of Jonah has profound symbolic meaning. This short dramatic story of an Old Testament prophet who spent three days inside a large fish relates essential truths about human existence before God. This story applies equally to the prophet Jonah, individually to every human being, and collectively to the entire human race, and it raises such important issues as disobedience to God, repentance, and God's mercy...

December 25, 2023

After a rather long break IBT has released a new edition in the Nogai language - the Pentateuch, which includes a translation of the book of Genesis published in 2016 and new translations of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The work on these books was a multi-stage process of translation, exegetical checking, editing, comprehension testing and consultations that took about 5 years.

The Nogai language belongs to the Kypchak group of Turkic languages. Nogai people are settled quite widely in the North Caucasus and in the Southern Volga region. According to the 2020 census, more than 109,000 people speak the Nogai language...

December 1, 2023

The Institute for Bible Translation continues to release the books of the Old Testament translated into the Tabasaran language.

Tabasarans is one of the indigenous peoples of southern Dagestan. There are 151,466 Tabasarans in Russia (Census 2021), they speak the Tabasaran language, which belongs to the Lezghi group of the Nakh-Dagestan family.

Previously, the following translations have been published in Tabasaran: the Gospel of Mark (1997); the Gospel of Luke (2000); Four Gospels and the Acts (2004); Stories about Jesus Christ (2010); the New Testament (2010); Ruth, Jonah (2013); Esther, Daniel (2016); Genesis (2018) and Proverbs (2018).

October 26, 2023

IBT has published a translation of the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts in the Abaza language. According to the 2020 census, there are 43,793 Abazas in Russia. The Abaza language belongs to  the Abkhaz-Adyghe family of North Caucasian languages. The original homeland of the Abazas is Abkhazia, from where they migrated to the northern slopes of the Caucasus range in the XIII-XIV centuries A.D.  Most Abazas now live in the Abaza district of the Karachai-Cherkess Republic of the Russian Federation and in its capital city, Cherkessk.

June 9, 2023

The Institute for Bible Translation (IBT), in partnership with  the  Bible Society in Russia (BSR), SIL International and the United Bible Societies, recently published the complete Bible in the Bashkir language, titled (in translation from Bashkir) “Holy Scripture (Taurat, Zebur, Injil)”.

The full canonical Bible has by now been translated into about 728 languages (about 10% of the 7000 or so languages spoken in the world today). Bashkir, the fourth-largest language in the Russian Federation by number of speakers (approximately 1.3 million), is one of the official languages of the Republic of Bashkortostan in central Russia. It too has now joined the ranks of languages with a complete translation of the Bible, the Book of Books, the most translated text in the world...