Moscow, September 27, 2013
Work on translation was carried out by a collective that included: senior researcher of the Lexicology and Lexicography Department of the Language, Literature and Arts institute of the Dagestani scientific center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, doctoral candidate in Linguistics Hizri Yusupov, and a leading specialist on the Caucasus, expert in the typology and comparative historical grammar of the languages of Dagestan, Deputy Director of the Institute of Linguistics (RAS), doctor of philology M.E. Alexeyev.
Earlier, the Institute for Bible Translation published the Gospel of Mark in the Dargin language in 2002 and, after a long pause, the Gospel of Luke in 2011.
The present publication is being issued together with the audio-recording of the translation on CD. Thus, the Dargwa (Dargin people) will have an opportunity not only to read, but also to hear the Gospel, which will ease their perception of the text. Such a multi-media publication is the first of such kind among the Dagestani projects.
Dargins, the second largest ethnic group in Dagestan (after the Avars), make up 16.5% of population of the republic. According to the Russian census of 2010, 589,000 Dargins live in Russia.
The literary tradition of the Dargin language goes back at least to the 18th century. The traditional Arabic script was replaced in 1928by the Latin alphabet, and in 1938 by the Cyrillic alphabet. Currently, first to fourth grade school lessons in Dagestan are taught in Dargin; this language is also taught as a subject in the secondary schools and colleges. Newspapers and journals are published in Dargin, as are teaching aids, dictionaries, poetry and folklore collections, essays, stories and novels; there is also a Dargin national theater.
