IBT has recently published a trial translation of the Old Testament books of Ruth and Jonah in the Gagauz language. Gagauz is a Turkic language spoken by approximately 170,000 people, primarily in southern Moldova and Ukraine.

This is the first time that these two books have been translated into Gagauz. Prior to this, the only portions of the Old Testament translated into Gagauz were Fr. Mikhail Chakir’s translations of the Sacred History of the Old Testament (1907) and Psalms (1936), and IBT’s translation of the Liturgical Six Psalms or Hexapsalmos (2011). IBT also translated the full New Testament (2006) and Children’s Bible (2011) into Gagauz.

The Gagauz Ruth/Jonah edition was adapted to the changing sociolinguistic situation among the Gagauz people: since the older generations are used to reading Gagauz in the Cyrillic script while the younger generations in the Roman script, IBT published this book in both scripts in parallel.

The PDF version of Ruth/Jonah can be downloaded from the IBT website (Bible Translations in electronic formats).