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April 5, 2005

The Gospels and Acts in Nogai are published

The Nogai people are dispersed in the Stavropol region, Dagestan, Karachayevo-Cherkess, Astrakhan region and Azerbaijan. The population is 90,000. Their language belongs to the Turkic family. Some 90.4 percent of the population consider Nogai their mother tongue. The Nogai are Sunni Muslims. IBT has previously translated Luke’s Gospel (1999).

“When I began to work on the translation I could never have imagined that the work would have such an influence on me,” one of the Nogai translators said. “We linguists were suffering a lack of words in our language – the language was quite simply about to die. When we began to translate the Bible, we began to search for words that could provide a correct translation, and it was as if the words came flooding back to us like a river from which we could drink. The language began to revive.”

“The Bible is not just the book of the Christians, it is the Word of God. I am glad that I can get to know it in my mother tongue, and I am grateful to all who have worked on it,” said a village elder.

The books will be dispatched to Mahachkala and Stavropol for further distribution. They will be welcomed with open arms in academic, cultural and educational circles. Meanwhile the work on translating the rest of the New Testament continues.

Institute for Bible Translation
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Phone +46-8-722 23 40
Fax +46-8-722 23 45
E-mail: info@ibtnet.org

Institute for Bible Translation
P.O. Box 216
Alhambra, CA, 91802, USA
Phone: +1-626-281 4740
Fax: +1-626-458 0677
E-mail: ibtna@ibtnet.org