IBT has published an edition of selected parables of Jesus from Luke’s Gospel in three more languages: Tatar, Rutul and Tsakhur. Previous editions of this book were published in Agul (2007), Dungan, Kumyk and Nogai (2016), and Dargi (2017).

IBT continues to publish translations of Proverbs, a book of wisdom from the Old Testament, in various languages of Russia and the CIS. The most recent edition of this book has recently come out in the Nogai language.

The Nogai are a Turkic people group that resides in Dagestan, Stavropol region, Karachay-Cherkessia, Chechnya, and Astrakhan oblast. The group numbers around 103,600 people. Nogai belongs to the Turkic language family.

How does one translate in such a way that the information relevant in one culture at a certain time would be communicated with the same relevance in a different culture at a different time? What does one need to be mindful of in order to impact a contemporary audience in the same way that the original audience was impacted? What Biblical materials are relevant for a particular audience?

A presentation of IBT’s latest scholarly edition, The Pauline Epistles: Texts and Commentary, was held on September 26.  IBT co-published this edition with publishing house “Granat”, which organized the presentation at a cultural center in Moscow.

IBT and its partner organization in Azerbaijan, “Kitab”, have published a new edition of IBT’s popular illustrated Children’s Bible (CB) in the Azeri language. Previously, IBT and Kitab had cooperated on the translation of the full Azeri Bible, which Kitab published in 2009. The Azeri title of the new CB literally means “Pearls from Holy Scripture.” 3,000 copies of this edition were printed in Baku this summer and the book is now being distributed among Azeri readers.

IBT has published the second edition of the Altai New Testament, fourteen years after the first edition was released (2003). Altai is a Turkic language spoken by about 57,000 people primarily in south Siberia. In response to requests from readers over the past decade, this edition remains a meaning-based translation and has been thoroughly edited to replace many archaic expressions and to simplify overly complex “Biblical style,” thereby achieving greater naturalness and clarity.

The Institute for Bible Translation has published a new edition of the Gospel of Luke in Bashkir, a Turkic language spoken in central Russia. Distribution of the 1,000 copy print-run has already begun among the Bashkir people.
The first edition of Bashkir Luke was published in 1996.  The text used for the 2^nd edition is the one that was published in the Bashkir New Testament in 2015.  Other past publications include the Gospel of John (2000) and the Gospel of Mark (2003).  All of these printings are long gone, and IBT has received numerous reprint requests from churches in Bashkortstan and the Moscow area, which took an active part in funding the current edition of Luke.

IBT’s diglot Turkmen/Russian edition of the book of Proverbs has been presented to the Russian Orthodox church in Ashgabat, the capital city of Turkmenistan, by Archbishop Theophylact during his visit to Ashgabat on June 16. This edition of the book of Proverbs was prepared by IBT in close coordination with the Russian Orthodox Church. The book will be distributed for free in Orthodox churches in Turkmenistan to people who are interested in studying the Russian language by means of this publication.

IBT has published and officially presented the first-ever translation of the full Bible in Uzbek. This Turkic language is spoken by up to 30 million people worldwide, primarily in the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan. Uzbek now joins about 600 other languages that have a full translation of the canonical Holy Scriptures (less than 10% of the world’s total languages.)
The official Bible presentation was held by BSU and IBT in Tashkent on June 1, 2017 at the headquarters of the Tashkent diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. The presentation was attended by representatives of Uzbekistan’s Committee of Religious Affairs, the Russian Orthodox Church, the embassies of Russia and the United States, the United Bible Societies (including the Bible societies of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), the Islamic University of Tashkent, and leaders of various Christian confessions.

There are about 120,000 speakers of the Adyghe language, most of whom live in the Republic of Adyghea in the northwest Caucasus region of the Russian Federation.

From 2002 to 2015 IBT published 11 Old Testament books in Adyghe:  1-2 Samuel (2002), Genesis (2005),  Ruth, Esther and Jonah (2006), Psalms (2007), 1-2 Kings (2009), Exodus (2014), and Proverbs (2014, 2016). The New Testament was published in the early 1990s. Now the book of Daniel has also been published.