From 14 to 17 February 2017 IBT held in its office a workshop for 18 participants from 10 translation projects (Abaza, Avar, Altai, Balkar, Chukchi, Dargi, Rutul, Siberian Tatar, Tsakhur, and for the first time Russian Sign language).

IBT has published an illustrated edition of “Parables from the Gospel of Luke” in the Dargi language.

The Dargi people live primarily in the Republic of Dagestan (Caucasus region of southern Russia). With a population of about 590,000, they comprise about 16% of the total population of Dagestan and are the second largest ethnic group there. Most live in the mountainous and foothill areas of central Dagestan.

IBT has published a new illustrated Scripture portion, the Noah story, in the Dungan language. The story of Noah and the Flood from the book of Genesis is the first publication in the “Lives of the Prophets” series that the Dungan translation team is working on following the popular edition of the Proverbs of Solomon (published in 2015). The Noah story is presented in parallel columns in Dungan and Russian and is illustrated by beautiful artwork produced by a Dungan painter. An audio CD with the recording of the story in Dungan is included with the book.

After IBT published the New Testament in the Tabasaran language of Dagestan in 2010,  the translation team decided to continue their work by translating the Old Testament. Their first Old Testament trial publication (Ruth and Jonah) came out in 2013.  The translators then turned their attention to further OT books, including Esther and Daniel, which were printed in late 2016. Tabasaran is spoken by about 125,000 people and is considered by many linguists to be the record holder among the world’s languages for the number of grammatical cases, 48.

One more book of the Bible has been published by IBT in the Sakha (Yakut) language, a translation of the Proverbs of Solomon. The main Sakha translator and exegete for this IBT project, Sargylana Leontieva was constantly astonished by the interest expressed in these biblical proverbs by non-religious Sakha people who are not in any way involved in the work of Bible translation. “Apparently, it’s because biblical proverbs remind Yakuts of our own folklore with its many proverbial sayings,” she reflects. “The Proverbs contain the kind of wisdom and advice that is vital for all people.”

The PDF version of this Yakut translation may be found on the Electronic Books page of the IBT website. 

The book of Psalms in the Tuvan language was first published in 2005, and a revised version was included in the full Tuvan Bible (2011). The audio version of this book was recorded in summer 2015 in Kyzyl, the capital city of Tuva, and has now been made available on CD and as a free download online.

Two Old Testament books – Psalms and Proverbs – have recently been published in the Kurmanji dialect of the Kurdish language. Kurds speaking this dialect live primarily in Armenia, Georgia, the Central Asian republics, and several regions of the Russian Federation. Literacy in this dialect of Kurdish was introduced in 1946 on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet with additional letters.

Work on translating the Bible into Kurmanji-Kurdish was begun by IBT in 1993. The translation of the New Testament was published in 2000 and was well-received by Kurdish Christians. A revised version of the New Testament (in both Cyrillic script and Roman script) was published in 2011.

A new book has been published in the Lak language of Dagestan. This is the Gospel of Matthew, released together with its audio recording on CD. The PDF version of the book is available for download from the e-book section of IBT website.

The Lak language is spoken by about 146,000 native speakers.The historical center of Lak society is in the town of Kumukh in the highlands of Dagestan, but today most Laks live in the city of Makhachkala near the Caspian Sea and other lowland parts of Dagestan and Russia...

IBT has published an illustrated edition of “Gospel Parables” in the Nogai language with a supplemental audio recording on CD. This is the fourth publication in the Gospel Parables series, which began in 2007 with the Agul-language version and continued in 2015-2016 with publications in Dungan and Kumyk. This edition contains four parables from Luke’s Gospel:  the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35),  the Wedding Feast (Luke 14:16-23), the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), and the Tax Collector and Pharisee (Luke 18:10-14).

IBT has published the first-ever translation of the full Bible in Crimean Tatar, a Turkic language spoken by about a quarter of a million people, primarily on the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea (related but not identical to the Tatar language spoken in Kazan and the Volga region of north central Russia). The translation team included Crimean Tatar writers together with specialists in the field of Bible translation from IBT and IBT’s international partner organization, Pioneer Bible Translators. The Crimean Tatar language is now one of about 550 languages worldwide that has a full translation of the Holy Scriptures.

The first translations of Scripture materials into Crimean Tatar (previously known as the Cuman language) were done in the 1340s by Franciscan monks, who translated Gospel passages including the prayer “Our Father”.  These passages were added to the unique 13^th century trilingual dictionary knows as the Codex Cumanicus...