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.

IBT has published a Kumyk-language edition of four parables from the Gospel of Luke: the Good Samaritan (10:30-35), the Wedding Feast (14:16-23), the Prodigal Son (15:11-32) and the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (18:10-14). This book was previously published by IBT in the Agul (2007) and Dungan (2015) languages. The edition contains 35 black-and-white  illustrations.  Produced by an artist from Adyghea (northwest Caucasus),  the illustrations give a Caucasian visual perspective on the stories told by Jesus and bring the world of the Bible closer to Kumyk readers, who live for the most part in the Dagestan region of the northern Caucasus.

One of IBT’s newest publications is an illustrated edition of Bible Stories in the Kalmyk language. This is a collection of 58 short narratives taken from both the Old and New Testaments, beginning with Creation and ending with Revelation. It is a significantly revised and shortened form of the Children’s Bible, which IBT published in Kalmyk in 1998. Even though Kalmyk is an endangered language (only 44% of the ethnic Kalmyk population can speak their language), there has been a serious revitalization movement in progress among the Kalmyks over the past decade. One of the  multitalented young activists in this movement who is working to strengthen her mother tongue is Elistina Shinyakaeva...