March 27, 2023
Four Gospels, Acts and Revelation in the Lak language, IBT 2023

The Institute of Bible Translation (IBT) has published a new edition Injil in the Lak language, including the Four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the book of Revelation.

The Laks (approximately 173,000 in Russia, according to the 2021 census) are one of the indigenous peoples of the central part of Dagestan, where there are about 60 Lak villages. The Lak language belongs to the Nakh-Dagestan language group. The Laks traditionally practice Islam.

Since the first Lak Scripture portion was published in 1996, the knowledge and skills of the translation team and their ability to translate the Biblical text have improved with each new edition. Many key terms have been clarified, the spelling of proper names has been polished, etc. Now all these books have been revised and printed in a single edition...

March 20, 2023

The Institute for Bible Translation is continuing its series of short "Stories of the Prophets" in the Dungan language, telling the story of biblical prophets who are revered by Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. The newest books in the series are David and Solomon. The texts of the Dungan translation are accompanied by a parallel Russian text and colorful illustrations by the Dungan artist Khalida Shimova, who portrayed the biblical characters as closely as possible to the Dungan readers’ worldview, psychology, and way of life. 

Spring 2023 Newsletter

In December 2022 a new phase began in the life of the Institute for Bible Translation: Dr. Vitaly Voinov, IBT director since 2013, handed over his directorship to his successor, Bron Cleaver. We interviewed them individually and would like to offer you an insight into this change in the life of IBT.

Vitaly, was it a valuable life experience for you to be the director of IBT? What was most important?

Infinitely valuable! This gave me the opportunity to participate not just in one or two translation projects, but in almost fifty different projects at the same time. I got to know a lot of very talented people dedicated to their language and was able to contribute to maintaining and promoting their work. I also realized that not all problems can simply be “rammed through” by personal willpower: you need to be able to get other people to work together to solve problems that are too big for one person, even the director...

January 24, 2023

The Institute for Bible Translation (IBT) has produced the first-ever translation of the complete Bible into the Karakalpak language. The project began in the mid-1990s and was carried out by IBT in partnership with the United Bible Societies and SIL International. During the preparation of the full Bible, the following trial editions were published in Karakalpak: the Four Gospels (1999), Stories of Jesus Christ (2001), the New Testament (2004, audio recording* 2011), the Children’s Bible (2007,  and Roman and Cyrillic script), Genesis (2009), and Ruth/Esther/ Jonah (2009, + DVD 2010).

Winter 2022-2023 Newsletter on the Kurdish-Kurmanji project

The full Bible in the Kurmanji dialect spoken by Kurds in Armenia and Russia is in the final stages of work, and we at IBT hope that it will be published already in 2024. At this last stage of work, the figure of the philological editor becomes particularly important. This is the translation team’s mother-tongue Kurmanji speaker who improves the translation in terms of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and naturalness, and together with the other team members assesses corrections suggested by reviewers. In the course of the past several decades of work, the IBT/SIL/UBS Kurmanji translation project has had several philological editors, and a highly professional new language specialist joined the team in 2017 – just in time to pull together the work on the full Bible...