In mid-April, two IBT staff members attended the EMDC conference in Holland. EMDC (Eurasia Media & Distribution Consultation) is an annual forum, meeting alternately in Asia and Europe, at which minority language workers can meet with electronic media specialists and technicians, recording specialists, graphic artists, digital publishers and specialists in orality and ethno-arts. This year's EMDC hosted 380 participants from 130 organizations in 61 countries.

The latest New Testament to be published by IBT is in Bashkir, a Turkic language spoken by more than 1 million people in central Russia. IBT began work on this first-ever translation of the full New Testament into Bashkir in the mid-1990s with a view towards producing a clear, accurate and natural text. Positive scholarly reviews of the translated text by the Institute of History, Language and Literature in Ufa, the capital city of Bashkortostan, testify to the fact that this goal has been achieved.

IBT is continuing to make progress towards the goal of translating and publishing the Old Testament in the Adyghe language, spoken by about 120,000 people in the Northwest Caucasus in south Russia and many more in the diaspora. The latest trial publication is the book of Exodus, delivered to Adyghea in late February.

IBT staff in Moscow recently completed an almost month-long project to finish the audio recording of the New Testament in the Khakas language of south Siberia. The Gospels were recorded in Khakas in 2008. The full NT was published only in 2009, and this was the first opportunity to complete the recording of Acts through Revelation.

In January 2015 two translation team members from IBT's Avar and Ingush projects traveled to the Holy Land for a 10-day study tour focusing on the historical, geographical and cultural contexts in which the Bible was written. This tour was arranged by the Home for Bible Translators, an organization that for the past two decades has been providing high quality educational programs for Bible translators from around the world to increase their level of expertise in translating the Holy Scriptures...