Russian
December 1, 2023

The Institute for Bible Translation continues to release the books of the Old Testament translated into the Tabasaran language.

Tabasarans is one of the indigenous peoples of southern Dagestan. There are 151,466 Tabasarans in Russia (Census 2021), they speak the Tabasaran language, which belongs to the Lezghi group of the Nakh-Dagestan family.

Previously, the following translations have been published in Tabasaran: the Gospel of Mark (1997); the Gospel of Luke (2000); Four Gospels and the Acts (2004); Stories about Jesus Christ (2010); the New Testament (2010); Ruth, Jonah (2013); Esther, Daniel (2016); Genesis (2018) and Proverbs (2018).

October 26, 2023

IBT has published a translation of the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts in the Abaza language. According to the 2020 census, there are 43,793 Abazas in Russia. The Abaza language belongs to  the Abkhaz-Adyghe family of North Caucasian languages. The original homeland of the Abazas is Abkhazia, from where they migrated to the northern slopes of the Caucasus range in the XIII-XIV centuries A.D.  Most Abazas now live in the Abaza district of the Karachai-Cherkess Republic of the Russian Federation and in its capital city, Cherkessk.

June 9, 2023

The Institute for Bible Translation (IBT), in partnership with  the  Bible Society in Russia (BSR), SIL International and the United Bible Societies, recently published the complete Bible in the Bashkir language, titled (in translation from Bashkir) “Holy Scripture (Taurat, Zebur, Injil)”.

The full canonical Bible has by now been translated into about 728 languages (about 10% of the 7000 or so languages spoken in the world today). Bashkir, the fourth-largest language in the Russian Federation by number of speakers (approximately 1.3 million), is one of the official languages of the Republic of Bashkortostan in central Russia. It too has now joined the ranks of languages with a complete translation of the Bible, the Book of Books, the most translated text in the world...

May 22, 2023

The Institute for Bible Translation (IBT) has printed the first translation of the Pentateuch into the Lezgi language. Prior Scripture publications in Lezgi include: Excerpts from Matthew (1990); Mark (1996); Luke/Acts  (2004); the Children’s Bible (2009); Ruth/Esther/ Jonah (2010); the Four Gospels (2014); and the New Testament (2018).

The Lezgi language belongs to the Lezgic group of the Nakh-Dagestanian family of Caucasian languages. It is spoken by more than 700,000 people in southern Dagestan and northern Azerbaijan.

The translation work was carried out by a highly qualified IBT team that includes experts in the Lezgi language, as well as exegetes and Bible scholars. The translation was tested with native speakers and reviewed at the Tsadasa Institute of Language, Literature and Art in Dagestan...

May 15, 2023

The Institute for Bible Translation (IBT) has published the first-ever translation of the book of the prophet Daniel in the Avar language. The book of Daniel is one of the most widely read books of the Old Testament. It includes the well-known stories of Daniel in the lions’ den, the three young men in the fiery furnace, and the divine handwriting on the wall. It also contains many prophecies about the future.

The Avar language belongs to the Nakh-Dagestanian language family, with 956,800 speakers according to the 2021 census of the Russian Federation. It is also used as a language of interethnic communication by the Andic and Tsezic language groups. Avars live mainly in the Republic of Dagestan, where they constitute about 30% of the total population...