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30th anniversary of IBT in Russia

In 2025 IBT celebrates the 30th anniversary of its work in Russia. The anniversary celebration was held as part of an international conference called "Linguistic Forum 2025: Bible Translation as a Means of Language Preservation and Development. Traditions and New Approaches," organized by IBT and the Institute of Linguistics (RAS).  Read more

four-gospels-and-acts-in-nenets

IBT has published an important new book  in the Nenets language: the Four Gospels together with the Acts of the Apostles.

The edition opens with a welcoming address by Orthodox Archbishop Nicholas of Salekhard and Novy Urengoy. He emphasizes that reading the New Testament is indispensable spiritual nourishment for believers and contributes to a person's moral transformation. He also notes that this translation is not merely a linguistic project, but the fruit of immense labor requiring deep theological and language knowledge, as well as love for the Word of God and for the Nenets people.

the-book-of-proverbs-and-the-folk-wisdom-of-the-turkic-peoples

Autumn 2025 Newsletter on the Balkar and Altai projects

IBT recently held a training seminar in Uzbekistan on translating the Old Testament book of Proverbs into the Turkic languages. Here is what Balkar translator Marziyat reported about this seminar: “Once I heard a lecture on love by Fr. Alexander Menn, who said that when Christ came, it wasn’t as if the world was completely unprepared – the history of humanity given in the Old Testament had actually prepared people for His coming. The Wisdom literature, and Solomon’s Proverbs in particular, were part of this preparation for the Jewish people. But what about for the rest of humankind? The seminar on Proverbs offered us a vivid answer to this question...

bible-in-transcaucasian-kurmanji-kurdish

The herculean effort to translate the Holy Scriptures into the Kurmanji variant of the Kurdish language spoken in the Caucasus region has finally been completed after many years of work: the Institute for Bible Translation has published the first complete Bible in the Transcaucasian dialect of Kurmanji Kurdish using the Cyrillic script. The Kurds are an ancient people residing primarily in the historical and ethnographic region of Kurdistan, which is presently divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Their global population is approximately 40 million. According to the 2021 Russian census, there are 50,701 Kurds in the Russian Federation...

ibt-training-seminar-on-oral-bible-translation

On June 22-26, 2025, the Institute for Bible Translation conducted a seminar for new translators from various Dagestanian languages, including those with no writing system. During this training event, IBT launched several new projects that will be using oral Bible translation (OBT) methodology. New projects have now been launched in the Archi, Botlikh, Murego-Gubden, Tindi, Khvarshin, Tsez and Chirag languages. The seminar, structured as a blend of lectures on theory and practical sessions, marked the beginning of these initiatives. 

book-of-ruth-in-abkhaz

The Institute for Bible Translation has published a translation of the Old Testament book of Ruth in the Abkhaz language. Previously, the book of Jonah (2023) and a collection of Gospel Parables (2023) had been published in Abkhaz. This edition was printed in Abkhazia’s capital city, Sukhum (a.k.a. Aqwa). 

The Abkhaz language belongs to the Abkhaz-Adyghe branch of the Northwest Caucasian language family. It is one of the official languages of Abkhazia, together with Russian, and is spoken primarily in Abkhazia and Turkey.