How should a translator approach the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, called “Torah” in Hebrew? How does one begin the translation of this foundational part of the Old Testament? How can translators avoid getting buried under the many minute details in the ancient text that modern readers are usually not aware of? How can one find the spiritual and meaning core of these texts? Without a doubt, any translator of the Pentateuch must face these questions.

In June 4-8, 2018, in the city of Nalchik, the Institute for Bible Translation held a seminar on "Translation of the Holy Scripture in Caucasian Languages: Scripture Engagement Stage". The seminar was attended by 30 participants from 9 IBT translation projects, namely Adyghe, Balkar, Dargi, Kabardian, Karachai, Ingush, Lak, Lezgi and Tabasaran.

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?

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.

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).

How does one translate culture-specific elements found in ancient Israelite society into languages in which these concepts do not exist? How can these concepts be transferred into the new cultural context of the recipient language and how much adaptation is permissible?  These  questions, the focus of much scholarly discussion in contemporary Biblical studies, were the focus of IBT’s recent seminar for Bible translation teams  on “Bridging the Cultural Gap Between the World of the Bible and the Languages of Russia/CIS”, held outside Moscow in late October.

In early June, IBT held a seminar in Moscow on what is known in Bible translation circles as Scripture Engagement. The seminar was attended by 21 people from 11 different ethnic groups of Russia and the CIS into whose language IBT has already translated significant portions of the Bible.  Many of the participants were not IBT translation team staff, but rather members of churches that are using IBT’s Scripture translations.

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...