"The Holy Scripture is always a source of inspiration. You cannot learn it once and for all like a multiplication table, and then put it aside and simply recall it at need. When you come into contact with this Book, when you read it or look it through, you always see something that you have not noticed beforehand. Now we are at the point of starting the translation of John. It must be difficult, but we have already entered the water. There will be hidden reefs of course, but we will not tread on the ground – we shall walk on the water!”

“The mill turns as the wind turns” was a proverbial expression that Fr. Cosmas, an Orthodox monk from the USA, could not make any sense of when he first came across it in a Gagauz story that he was reading. Fr. Cosmas’s life story is in itself worthy of attention, but what is important for us here is that Fr. Cosmas is now an exegetical advisor in training for the IBT Gagauz project.

Don't biblical texts sometimes seem contradictory? And isn't it these very contradictions that make them relevant to all people, regardless of their ethnic, linguistic or historical contexts? The Bible is not abstract ideology, but rather a practical source of life, springing from God Himself, who is Love. Whoever reads the books of Job, Ecclesiastes or Proverbs as ideology may be at a loss. Whoever reads them from within real human situations may taste their all-embracing character. Likewise, the messages from the two translation teams, Adyghe and Kabardian, whose members gathered for a discussion at the recent IBT seminar on the Wisdom and Poetic books of the Old Testament at first seemed contradictory.

When in the 19th century Archbishop Innokenty served the Divine Liturgy for the Yakut people in the Yakut language f

The Kalmyks are famous for their Kalmyk tea, a very special drink with cream, salt and spices, but no sugar. You drink a cup of this tea for breakfast and you do not have to eat any food till lunch time. They boast of their keen eyesight and good teeth thanks to this sugarless diet. The Kalmyks are the only Buddhist people in the whole of Europe, so they should be, and actually are, contemplative in comparison to other Europeans. They have deservedly earned their reputation as calm and peaceful people, who are never in a hurry. They have also earned their reputation as an intellectual nation because they have adopted chess as their national game and it is being taught even to little children from the first years of schooling...

The Dolgans are a young nation. For their national identity was recognized only during the 20th century! Their language derives from Yakut and although culturally and ethnically these two peoples of the North are distinct, for many years the Dolgans were used to calling themselves “Yakut”. Only in the 1960s did scholars decide that the Dolgan language was sufficiently different from Yakut that it could be considered a separate language and not just a dialect. But reality is that the newly recognized Dolgan national language is on the edge of extinction...

It was an ordinary working day in our IBT office. Two translation teams had come to Moscow for consultations. For both teams it was the final stage of their work. Both Bibles are already fully translated. In one case the Bible is almost ready to be submitted to the publication department, and the last technical details are being discussed. In another case the team is working with the third and fourth drafts of different Bible books. I was intrigued by the similarity of these two situations and I wondered how the translators representing two great people groups, one from the Caucasus and one from the Crimea, feel after their tremendous work.

The Tatar project is a very special one, for the Tatars are the second largest ethnic group of the Russian Federation after the Russians. This is no wonder, for the histories of the two peoples are deeply intertwined and in the course of the centuries the two cultures have interpenetrated each other profoundly. The Mongol-Tatar invasion of Rus’ in 1237 and their subsequent domination of it (the so called Yoke, which lasted till 1480) was a great blow to this young Slavic Christian culture and changed the course of Russian history for ever. The Mongol-Tatars of that period were pagan tribes of different origins and thus they assimilated the customs and traditions of conquered peoples rather easily, but in 1262 the Golden Horde announced its adoption of Islam...

“The choom is made of reindeer skins and covered with tarpaulin, so it is really warm inside even when it is very cold outside. You should take your tame deer always with you into the choom, otherwise they go completely crazy because of the mosquitoes”, - this is how Tatiana Lar, the translator in our Nenets project and a world famous singer of national Nenets songs and epics, starts her story.

The Kurds are probably the largest nation in the world without a state. They live scattered in many countries, but this life dispersed through alien and often hostile surroundings makes them cling even more strongly to their historical roots and cultural identity. In the course of the centuries the majority of Kurds have become Muslim, yet there are also Kurdish Yezidis, who follow a mixture of faiths including elements of Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity and ancient paganism. This syncretistic religion dates back to a Sufi Sheikh who founded it in Iraq in the Middle Ages. The Yezidi cult focuses on sun worship and gives much space to the worship of angels with the spirit of evil among them. Kurds living in Russia are for the most part Yezidis...