IBT has published the translation of the Old Testament book of Job in Kumyk, a Turkic language spoken by more than 400,000 people, primarily in the Dagestan region of southern Russia. 

The book of Job has a special place both in the Bible and among the masterpieces of world literature, offering deep theological reflection on why suffering afflicts even good people in this life. It is one of the most difficult books of the Bible to translate due to numerous difficulties having to do with rare words and ambiguous expressions in the Hebrew original. This is the first time that IBT has published the book of Job by itself in any of our projects.  The Hebrew poetic form of the central portion of the book was rendered as poetry in Kumyk, and footnotes deal with translation issues that were difficult to get across in the text...

IBT has published another translation of Scripture portions in the Avar language, spoken as a mother tongue by over 700,000 people primarily in Dagestan. The new publication contains the books of Ruth, Esther and Jonah from the Old Testament. The Avar New Testament was published in 2008, and previously published OT portions include the book of Proverbs (2005, 2007) and Genesis (2011).

The present translation was prepared by a new translation team consisting  of an independent translator (working directly from the Hebrew original), a philological editor, a field tester, and a translation consultant. Further work is in progress on the historical books of the OT.

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.