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.

IBT held a translator training seminar April 26-28 at the Tsadasa Institute of Language, Literature and the Arts in the city of Makhachkala in Dagestan. The seminar was devoted to practical language issues encountered by Bible translators. The fifteen seminar participants (primarily translators or philological editors in IBT’s translation projects) represented seven languages of the North Caucasus –  Avar, Balkar, Bezhta, Dargi, Kumyk, Lak and Tabasaran.

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.

IBT has published the book of Proverbs, one of the Wisdom Books of the Old Testament, in Kabardian, a language belonging to the West Caucasian language family. According to the census of 2010, there are more than 500,000 Kabardians in the Russian Federation, primarily in the Kabardino-Balkaria region of southern Russia. Proverbs is the third book of the OT published by IBT in Kabardian, following the Ruth/Jonah publication of 2009. The Kabardian New Testament was published by IBT in 1993. These books can be read online or downloaded from IBT’s website. Work on the OT is ongoing, with the book of Daniel next in line for printing.

The Kumyk people, numbering about 430,000 speakers, are the third largest ethnic group and largest Turkic-language people in Dagestan,  a region in the Caucasus area of south Russia where more than 30 different languages are spoken. 

IBT first published the New Testament in the Kumyk language in 2007.  This was followed in 2009 by the translation of the first Old Testament books – Genesis and Proverbs – in 2016 by the illustrated edition of Parables from the Gospel of Luke and now by the Book of Psalms.