Working in coordination with the Bible Society of Kyrgyzstan and the Orthodox Diocese of Kyrgyzstan, IBT has produced the Kyrgyz translation of  the Six Psalms (Hexapsalmos) that are used in the Orthodox church service. In mid-December, IBT’s deputy director Marina Lomova presented the diocese with 200 copies of this translation, which was printed in Bishkek by Al-Salam Publishing House.

How does one translate culture-specific elements found in ancient Israelite society into languages in which these concepts do not exist? How can these concepts be transferred into the new cultural context of the recipient language and how much adaptation is permissible?  These  questions, the focus of much scholarly discussion in contemporary Biblical studies, were the focus of IBT’s recent seminar for Bible translation teams  on “Bridging the Cultural Gap Between the World of the Bible and the Languages of Russia/CIS”, held outside Moscow in late October.

IBT has recently published an illustrated edition of “Bible Stories” in the Dungan language, spoken primarily in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and China. This book is a short version of IBT’s beloved Children’s Bible that introduces readers to 58 stories from the Old and New Testament.

The 8^th biennial international conference on Bible translation sponsored by the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (GIAL) and SIL International was held in Dallas, Texas on October 16-20.  This year’s event was attended by over 450 participants from more than 35 Bible agencies around the world.

IBT has already had a significant amount of experience translating the Scriptures into languages with no writing system of their own or with a writing system that was only recently created for the language.  For example, IBT published the Gospel of Luke and the book of Proverbs in the Bezhta language of Dagestan in 2000 and 2005, respectively. Another related language has now been added to this list, after almost two decades of work: the Andi language.