IBT has published the first-ever translation of the full Bible in Crimean Tatar, a Turkic language spoken by about a quarter of a million people, primarily on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea (related but not identical to the Tatar language spoken in Kazan and the Volga region of north central Russia). The translation team included Crimean Tatar writers together with specialists in the field of Bible translation from IBT and IBT’s international partner organization, Pioneer Bible Translators. The Crimean Tatar language is now one of about 550 languages worldwide that has a full translation of the Holy Scriptures.

The first translations of Scripture materials into Crimean Tatar (previously known as the Cuman language) were done in the 1340s by Franciscan monks, who translated Gospel passages including the prayer “Our Father”.  These passages were added to the unique 13^th century trilingual dictionary knows as the Codex Cumanicus...

IBT invites speakers and students of the languages of the Russian Federation to visit a new IBT resource on SoundCloud, where one can listen to audio recordings of Bible translations online (including via mobile apps for Android and iPhone), and to download them. IBT’s Sound Cloud page already has Proverbs in the Adyghe language, Psalms in Yakut, Psalms in Tuvan, and Stories about Jesus in Buryat. Keep an eye out for new entries!
 

Since publishing the Nogai New Testament (Injil) in 2011, IBT has continued translation work on Old Testament portions into Nogai, a Turkic language spoken by about 100,000 people in the North Caucasus area of Russia. IBT’s translations of Ruth, Esther and Jonah were already published in 2005. Genesis is the first book of the Pentateuch translated by IBT into contemporary Nogai, coming almost 200 years after the Pentateuch was first published in Nogai.

IBT has published the first-ever full translation of the Bible in the Tatar language.  This is the fifth translation of a complete Bible into a non-Slavic language of Russia, following upon Chuvash, Tuvan, Chechen and Udmurt.  Worldwide, the entire Bible has been translated into about 565 languages, now including Tatar. IBT’s Bible translation work into Tatar lasted more than 23 years.  The work was carried out by specialists in linguistics, biblical studies, and the Tatar language from IBT, SIL and UBS,  in cooperation with the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, and  was printed with a stamp of approval from the Institute of Linguistics at the Russian Academy of Sciences.