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.

The translated text underwent many levels of editing and checking, including a verse-by-verse comparison with the Greek original, stylistic editing for naturalness and beauty, comprehension testing with native Bashkir speakers for clarity, and a final check of each book by an experienced Bible translation consultant. Scholars who have worked on this translation over the past two decades include: Bashkir writers A. Khakimov, I. Burukaev, G. Mustafina and G. Gizatullina, Bashkir language scholars F. Khisamitdinova and R. Yanbulatova; expatriate exegetical advisors S. Cotrozzi (Germany) and T. Greed (Finland); translation consultant A. Desnitsky; and project coordinator N. Manzienko.  Previous trial publications in Bashkir include the Gospel of Luke (1996), John (1998, rev. ed. 2000), Acts (2002), and Mark (2003).

The official presentation of the New Testament took place on 27 March 2015 at a round-table discussion at the Institute of History, Language and Literature in Ufa.  It is our sincere hope that this translation of the New Testament into Bashkir will give many mother-tongue speakers the opportunity to discover the riches of the Injil for themselves and will provide good grounds for future interreligious dialogue among the Bashkir people.

The PDF version of the book is available for downloading from the IBT website.