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January 22, 2022

The first five books of the Old Testament, also known as the Pentateuch or the Mosaic Law, have been published for the first time ever in the Kumyk language. Kumyk belongs to the Kipchak group of Turkic languages. With about half a million speakers, Kumyk is one of the larger languages of Dagestan and is also spoken in northeast Chechnya and the Mozdok District of North Ossetia.

The translation team headed by the Institute for Bible Translation included experts in the Kumyk language as well as biblical scholars and linguists. The text was peer-reviewed and approved for publication by the Dagestan Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences...

 

November 29, 2021

IBT has published the third, revised edition of the Gospel of Luke in  Nanai, a minority  language spoken primarily in the Far East of the Russian Federation. According to the 2010 census, there are 11,671 Nanai people, but only 1,400 of them speak the Nanai language. The language belongs to the southern group of Tungusic languages and is listed in the UNESCO Red Book as endangered. Nanai language enthusiasts, who want to hold on to their cultural heritage for future generations, are greatly concerned about the fate of their language and are trying to preserve it, and Bible translation into Nanai helps accomplish this goal.

The first complete translation of Luke into Nanai language was published by  IBT in 2002, reprinted in 2005, then reprinted again in 2012 as a bilingual edition with a parallel Russian text. This first translation was produced by A.V. Stolyarov, a language scholar from St. Petersburg specializing in  Nanai.

November 11, 2021

IBT has published a new book in Chukchi, a Paleo-Asiatic language spoken in the extreme northeastern part of Siberia along the coast of the Arctic Ocean. According to the 2010 census there are around 16,000 ethnic Chukchis, but only about 5,000 indicated that they speak their native language. Therefore Gospel Parables was published as a bilingual edition together with the Russian text of these Scripture passages.

The book includes four parables from Luke's Gospel: The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-35), The Invitation to the Feast (Luke 14:16-24) and The Pharisee and The Tax Collector (Luke 18:10-14). Over the centuries these parables have been told and retold in different languages in various parts of the world. And now they are available in Chukchi...

September 30, 2021

A new Scripture portion in the Khakas language - the book of the prophet Jonah - has arrived in Abakan, the capital city of Khakassia in south Siberia.

According to the 2010 census, the Khakas language is spoken by 42,604 people. It belongs to the south Siberian group  of the Turkic languages and is spoken mainly in the Republic of Khakassia and partially in Krasnoyarsk Region and Tuva.

After the release of the New Testament in Khakas in 2009 and its reprint with a parallel Russian translation in 2011, the Khakas project had a rather long break while preparing for the next stage - the translation of the Old Testament. Currently, Genesis, Exodus, Psalms, and the books of Habakkuk and Malachi are in the works.

September 24, 2021

The Institute for Bible Translation has published the first Old Testament book in the Nenets language. The Nenets are a Samoyedic people that live in the far north of Russia. According to the 2010 census, the Nenets language is spoken by almost 22,000 people.

The Nenets people are already familiar with several New Testament books from IBT’s previously published translations : Luke's Gospel (1995, 2004); Stories about Jesus (2003, 2011 with an audio CD); Mark's Gospel (2010); John's Gospel with an audio CD (2014); Matthew's Gospel (2018), and a collection of illustrated Gospel  Parables (2020).