IBT has published the third, revised edition of the Gospel of Luke in Nanai, a minority language spoken primarily in the Far East of the Russian Federation. According to the 2010 census, there are 11,671 Nanai people, but only 1,400 of them speak the Nanai language. The language belongs to the southern group of Tungusic languages and is listed in the UNESCO Red Book as endangered. Nanai language enthusiasts, who want to hold on to their cultural heritage for future generations, are greatly concerned about the fate of their language and are trying to preserve it, and Bible translation into Nanai helps accomplish this goal.
The first complete translation of Luke into Nanai language was published by IBT in 2002, reprinted in 2005, then reprinted again in 2012 as a bilingual edition with a parallel Russian text. This first translation was produced by A.V. Stolyarov, a language scholar from St. Petersburg specializing in Nanai.