First complete Bible published in Uzbek language

Moscow, June 13, 2017

Photo: ibt.org.ru

A whole international team of professional translators from the Institute for Biblical Translation, the Summer Institute for Linguistics, and the United Bible Societies worked on the translation, with the support and active involvement of the Bible Society of Uzbekistan.

“That we now have a full Biblical text in the Uzbek language is a great joy—the joy that we can learn the Word of God. The Bible is the Book of Books. It is God’s revelation about how man should live on earth,” Metropolitan Vikenty of Tashkent and Uzbekistan said at the presentation of the new publication. In the bishop’s words, the newly-translated Bible “has great potential to penetrate into the heart and minds of many for people and harmony in Uzbekistan and in the whole world.”

The Deputy Director of the Institute for Biblical Translation Marina Lomova noted that the translation was cross-checked with source texts in Hebrew and Greek, emphasizing its high quality. “Great attention was devoted to the style of the Biblical text itself in the translation process. The translators’ goal was to transmit the meaning of the text to the modern reader in a clear and natural language,” she added. The translation passed several examinations in accordance with international requirements, and the texts were edited by leading philologists and linguists.

Work on translating Biblical texts into Uzbek began in the 19th century by the British Biblical Society, with the active participation of the Russian academic and orientalist Nikolai Ostroumov. A full translation was managed only at the end of 2016, the work having begun in the early 1990s.