IBT has published another translation of Scripture portions in the Avar language, spoken as a mother tongue by over 700,000 people primarily in Dagestan. The new publication contains the books of Ruth, Esther and Jonah from the Old Testament. The Avar New Testament was published in 2008, and previously published OT portions include the book of Proverbs (2005, 2007) and Genesis (2011).

The present translation was prepared by a new translation team consisting  of an independent translator (working directly from the Hebrew original), a philological editor, a field tester, and a translation consultant. Further work is in progress on the historical books of the OT.

IBT has published an edition of selected parables of Jesus from Luke’s Gospel in three more languages: Tatar, Rutul and Tsakhur. Previous editions of this book were published in Agul (2007), Dungan, Kumyk and Nogai (2016), and Dargi (2017).

IBT continues to publish translations of Proverbs, a book of wisdom from the Old Testament, in various languages of Russia and the CIS. The most recent edition of this book has recently come out in the Nogai language.

The Nogai are a Turkic people group that resides in Dagestan, Stavropol region, Karachay-Cherkessia, Chechnya, and Astrakhan oblast. The group numbers around 103,600 people. Nogai belongs to the Turkic language family.

How does one translate in such a way that the information relevant in one culture at a certain time would be communicated with the same relevance in a different culture at a different time? What does one need to be mindful of in order to impact a contemporary audience in the same way that the original audience was impacted? What Biblical materials are relevant for a particular audience?

A presentation of IBT’s latest scholarly edition, The Pauline Epistles: Texts and Commentary, was held on September 26.  IBT co-published this edition with publishing house “Granat”, which organized the presentation at a cultural center in Moscow.