Bible

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Newsletter July-September 2010

In the middle of May a round table discussion about the recently published New Testament in Khakas took place at the National Library in Abakan, the capital of Khakasia in southern Siberia. Members of the translation group, members of the Khakas writers' union and representatives of cultural, religious and educational life in Abakan were among the participants, as well as journalists from TV, radio and newspapers. Afterwards Komsomolskaya Pravda, in Communist times known to be very hostile towards Christian matters, published the Lord's prayer in both Russian and Khakas on their website and an audio-recorded interview with translator Ilya Topoev.

“In 1990 I was asked to translate the Gospel of Mark into Khakas”, recalled Ilya. “The Bible was an unknown book to me, but I began to translate on my own. That which I did not understand I just left out. In 1991 IBT invited me to a seminar in Siberia. Only then it became clear to me that the text should not only be translated, it should also be understood! During the following years I participated in many seminars organized by IBT. I learnt a lot about the Bible and got to know many translators with whom I had fruitful discussions. But the work was difficult. We had to find words for biblical terms which do not exist in Khakas like angel, prophet, Holy Spirit, etc. Without the exegetical advisors who came from abroad and lived in our country the work would not have been possible.” “The field testers were also very important”, added translator Galina Litvinenko. “They took the text to the field and found out if the text was well understood. For me personally the translation work meant a lot. I grew inside and understood how rich our language is, what deep philosophical thoughts our language can express. And it made me rich inside, something opened up for me which made my soul rich.”

After 20 years work the New Testament is now available to the Khakas and many participants at the round table expressed their gratitude.“This book will give new life to the Khakas language”, said a representative of the Ministry of Education, and a well-known folklore specialist continued: “This is a great achievement for our culture and for the spiritual life of our people. I would like to ask the administration of our republic to work for the propagation of this book. It is time for our people to rise above their shamanistic world view and turn to the supreme God.”

After the event we had the joy of meeting a house group of Khakas believers in Askiz, south of Abakan. Also here the New Testament was received with great joy. When asked if the NT was easy to read, one woman said: “This is the New Testament in our language, of course it is easy to read! We understand everything and can take it to our hearts. When we heard that the NT was published in Khakas we were overwhelmed with joy”. “God loves us Khakas so much that he gave us this book”, said another woman and added “This book will live in us and our language will live through it”.

Since the Khakas are only about 11% of the population in Khakasia many people are ashamed to speak their language. Our hope is that the New Testament will increase the self esteem of the Khakas and help them to understand how valuable they are and how much they are loved by God.

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