One more book of the Bible has been published by IBT in the Sakha (Yakut) language, a translation of the Proverbs of Solomon. The main Sakha translator and exegete for this IBT project, Sargylana Leontieva was constantly astonished by the interest expressed in these biblical proverbs by non-religious Sakha people who are not in any way involved in the work of Bible translation. “Apparently, it’s because biblical proverbs remind Yakuts of our own folklore with its many proverbial sayings,” she reflects. “The Proverbs contain the kind of wisdom and advice that is vital for all people.”

The PDF version of this Yakut translation may be found on the Electronic Books page of the IBT website. 

At the request of churches in the Siberian Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), IBT has published a revised and supplemented edition of the Children’s Bible in the Sakha (or Yakut) language of Siberia. Sakha is a Turkic language spoken by about 450,000 people. The previous edition of the full Sakha Children’s Bible was printed in 2013 and was rapidly distributed among the people.

IBT has also completed work on the Sakha translation of Proverbs and plans to publish this by the end of 2016. Translation work into Sakha is also progressing on Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Song of Songs, as well as on a biblical-theological wordbook.

Two Old Testament books – Psalms and Proverbs – have recently been published in the Kurmanji dialect of the Kurdish language. Kurds speaking this dialect live primarily in Armenia, Georgia, the Central Asian republics, and several regions of the Russian Federation. Literacy in this dialect of Kurdish was introduced in 1946 on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet with additional letters.

Work on translating the Bible into Kurmanji-Kurdish was begun by IBT in 1993. The translation of the New Testament was published in 2000 and was well-received by Kurdish Christians. A revised version of the New Testament (in both Cyrillic script and Roman script) was published in 2011.

A new book has been published in the Lak language of Dagestan. This is the Gospel of Matthew, released together with its audio recording on CD. The PDF version of the book is available for download from the e-book section of IBT website.

The Lak language is spoken by about 146,000 native speakers.The historical center of Lak society is in the town of Kumukh in the highlands of Dagestan, but today most Laks live in the city of Makhachkala near the Caspian Sea and other lowland parts of Dagestan and Russia...

IBT has published an illustrated edition of “Gospel Parables” in the Nogai language with a supplemental audio recording on CD. This is the fourth publication in the Gospel Parables series, which began in 2007 with the Agul-language version and continued in 2015-2016 with publications in Dungan and Kumyk. This edition contains four parables from Luke’s Gospel:  the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35),  the Wedding Feast (Luke 14:16-23), the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), and the Tax Collector and Pharisee (Luke 18:10-14).