Damira (name changed) is the Siberian Tatar woman who lends her voice for audio recording IBT’s translations. For Damira, reading Bible texts in Siberian Tatar is like solving an equation with multiple unknown variables. The first thing is that she has never held a Bible in her hands before. The second is that before participating in this project, she didn’t know the alphabet of her mother tongue, like the vast majority of Siberian Tatars. And with this initial state of affairs, she had to learn to read Scripture in Siberian Tatar effortlessly, at a good pace, so that her audio recording would sound natural.

Like all Siberian Tatars, Damira is a Muslim, but this doesn’t mean that she was familiar with the Old Testament stories, even by hearsay. She says the following about the degree of her religiosity: “We are Muslims: well, we know that there is God – Allah. We observe some traditions and hold some religious events, but we don’t do the daily prayers. We are believers, but not to such an extent that we would go to the mosque…”  

And this is what she said about reading in Siberian Tatar: “The Kazan version of the Tatar language that we have all studied at school and our native Siberian Tatar are like German and English. In Kazan Tatar it is as easy to read as in German: the letters are pronounced exactly the way they are written. But in Siberian Tatar, as in English, you have to know the rules of pronunciation. On the other hand, when I’m reading in Kazan literary Tatar, it’s like a foreign language for me: it’s easy to pronounce, but I don’t understand the words. When I started reading the first page of my first book in Siberian Tatar, I was not used to reading, but then I got the hang of it: I started recognizing the words, indeed they were part of my own language, everything was becoming clear, and I finished the book very quickly!”

In 2024, Damira came to Moscow for audio recording for the third time, following her earlier work on Jonah, Gospel Parables, Ruth and Esther. The audio recording of the Gospel of Mark was completed in four days. Damira gladly shared the story of her work as a reader and the circumstances surrounding it: 

“I really enjoyed recording this text. A few years ago I saw a feature film about the Gospel. I was interested but never imagined that I would be the one to make an audio recording about it! When I received the text in advance to familiarize myself with it before recording, I started searching and found a few more Russian-language films about Jesus. One of them turned out to be so authentic – exactly like our text! I watched it twice: first, because I had to listen carefully to the intonation to prepare for the audio recording, and second, because I really liked the story itself, because it is about Jesus Christ: how He came, how He led the people.

”I knew from past interviews that Damira has a deeply religious Muslim aunt, who regularly attends the mosque, performs daily prayers, and is familiar with themes common to Islam and Christianity. She also reads the surahs of the Koran in Arabic, though without understanding the language. Of course, I was curious to know if Damira would introduce the Gospel of Mark to her aunt, so I asked her directly about it:

“My aunt is already familiar with our previous translations. She says that in these stories we Muslims have a lot in common with Christians. Many of the commandments, many of the teachings are the same. But my aunt doesn’t read in Siberian Tatar, she listens. She doesn’t know the alphabet either, because it appeared only recently. I’ll definitely share the audio with her. I will also share the audio with my former classmate, who found out that I record biblical texts. After listening to them, he now asks for new ones, and says he listens to them in the evenings before going to sleep. The thing is that ever since my school years, whenever I meet with my former classmates , we usually communicate with each other in Russian. When this classmate heard my recordings, he was quite surprised: ‘How many years have we known each other, and I had no idea that you were so fluent in our native language!’ I want to present him with a book, too. If he liked listening to it, let him try reading it as well.”

“My main goal in participating in this project is to preserve our Siberian Tatar language,” Damira continues. “But the project itself is interesting, especially meeting different people thanks to it. I’ll even tell you about what happened to me during these few days of audio recording.” And she shared the following story:

“In ordinary life, we speak our own language very little, and mostly with the older generation: parents, grandmothers, aunts, etc. And then only once in a while. Sometimes we speak Russian with them, too. So the language is being forgotten. But here, for four days in a row I read and read and read in Siberian Tatar. Then the translator and I walked around Moscow after the recording, and we didn’t even immediately notice that we were speaking our own language! And last night, when I was free after the recording, I called a close friend just to chat. I started talking, and she interrupted me: ‘How unusual to hear you speaking our Siberian Tatar language!’ I was surprised. ‘Was I speaking it?’ I wondered. – ‘Well, yes,’ she replied, ‘this time you spoke Tatar with me from the very beginning!’ She and I have been friends for forty-odd years and have had practically no experience of speaking our own language with each other. Since our schooldays we’ve been accustomed to speaking Russian. When I was talking in my native language with the translator, I learned so many new words for myself. And, most importantly, I feel that now I can speak freely, I can communicate easily, whereas before I stammered, I was forgetting some words and could not recall them. Now they come up from my subconsciousness, and moreover my vocabulary is enriched with new words that I have never heard before. I want to memorize these new words, I want to keep talking!”

“Unfortunately, my sons have already passed the stage when language acquisition is easy: the eldest, who is 33, speaks broken Siberian Tatar, like a foreigner. The second son doesn’t speak it at all. Once he shared: ‘Of course, I want to know my native language, but it’s already difficult to learn it at my age.’ And now, thanks to this project, I have a dream: God willing, when my grandchildren are born, I want to speak to them only in my native language – in Siberian Tatar!”

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