In mid-November the Institute for Bible Translation held a week-long seminar on translating the poetic books and Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament. The course was attended by 40 participants - translators, editors, co-ordinators and consultants from 15 IBT and SIL Bible translation projects (Avar, Agul, Adygei, Ingush, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karakalpak, Komi Zyryan, Kumyk, Lezgi, Mari-Meadow, Mordvin-Moksha, Tabassaran, Tajik and Udi).

The course gave an overview of the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs. A broad selection of issues related to the translation of these books was discussed at the seminar. The most important of these issues were covered by the lectures of M. Salisbury (SIL, Britain) and A. Desnitsky (IBT, Moscow).  Special attention was paid to poetic devices, different varieties of parallelism, and key terms, as well as to textual and other exegetical issues.

The lectures were followed by discussion and working sessions on translating excerpts from these books into the specific languages represented by the participants.