IBT staff in Moscow recently completed an almost month-long project to finish the audio recording of the New Testament in the Khakas language of south Siberia. The Gospels were recorded in Khakas in 2008. The full NT was published only in 2009, and this was the first opportunity to complete the recording of Acts through Revelation.

In January 2015 two translation team members from IBT's Avar and Ingush projects traveled to the Holy Land for a 10-day study tour focusing on the historical, geographical and cultural contexts in which the Bible was written. This tour was arranged by the Home for Bible Translators, an organization that for the past two decades has been providing high quality educational programs for Bible translators from around the world to increase their level of expertise in translating the Holy Scriptures...

At the beginning of February IBT held a seminar in our office in Moscow for the purpose of introducing IBT's work to new workers and potential future workers. Participants came from various parts of Russia, including Altai, Yakutia, the Nenets Autonomous Region and the Northern Caucasus. Over the course of several days, seminar participants were introduced to topics that are important for translation team members to know well in their work with IBT: the structure and history of the Old and New Testaments, the historical and cultural context of the Bible, exegesis, translation theory, linguistic analysis, field testing, etc...

On 30 January 2015, the Institute for Bible Translation in Russia/CIS celebrated the 20^th anniversary of our official registration as a bona fide Russian organization. Since 1995, IBT staff and our partners in other Bible translation organizations have been working on translating Holy Scripture into more than 60 languages in the former USSR.

At the end of 2014, IBT published the Nenets translation of the Gospel of John. The Nenets are an indigenous people of the far north of Russia on the Arctic Ocean who number about 45,000 and speak a Samoyedic language. John's Gospel was originally intended to be published as part of the upcoming Nenets edition of the Four Gospels. However, at the Festival of Northern Peoples in March 2014, our translators received many requests for its earlier publication , and local believers began collecting funds to publish it as a separate edition...

 In late November 2014, IBT's audio manager Rodion Popov traveled to Maikop, the capital city of Adyghea in south Russia, to record the recently published book of Proverbs in the Adyghe language. Three professional actors from the Adyghe National Theater lent their voices to produce the recording.

From 30 October to 6 November IBT and its partnering Bible translation agencies conducted a seminar for translation teams on the topic of "The Old Testament in the New Testament: Intertextuality in Translation". The seminar was attended by translation teams from 18 different projects within Russia and the CIS, while the lecturers came from various organizations in Russia (A. Desnitsky, A. Somov, V. Voinov, O. Zaprometova), the UK (S. Crisp, D. Gray), Holland (M. de Lang, L. de Regt), and Finland (M. Sivonen).

On 21 October the New Testament in the Mari-Hill language, published by the Institute for Bible Translation in Helsinki, was presented to the Mari people at the National Library of Mari El in Yoshkar-Ola (Russian Federation).

The main goal of the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative is "to reflect constructively on the history of relationships between Evangelicals and Orthodoxin order to work towards better understanding, and encourage reconciliation and healing where wounds exist."  The focus of the 2014 meeting, held at St. Vlash Monastery outside of Durres, Albania 15-19 September, was on the mission of God, and the different but potentially complementary approaches to mission in Orthodox and evangelical churches.

IBT has audio recorded the book of Psalms in the Yakut (Sakha) language and is currently preparing this recording to be made available to the public. This is the second book of the Bible in Yakut that can be listened to as well as read – in 2007, IBT's Yakut New Testament translation was audio recorded by the Yakut Republic Library for the Blind.