Cyrillic Turkmen Bible (TUKIBTC)

Overview

The complete Turkmen Bible (Mukaddes Kitap) in Cyrillic script, published in 2017 by the Institute for Bible Translation (IBT), Moscow. This edition is the Cyrillic-script counterpart to the Latin-script full Bible published in 2016, and it represents the culmination of decades of IBT translation work in Turkmen that began with the Gospel of John in 1982 [1]. The 2002 revised New Testament (see TUKIBC) served as a foundation, and Old Testament books were added progressively: the Pentateuch (Towrat) appeared in 2007 in both scripts, followed by Proverbs in 2009, with the complete Bible finished in 2016-2017 [1]. The Cyrillic edition serves Turkmen speakers educated during the Soviet era and diaspora communities in Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan who continue to use the Cyrillic alphabet [2]. Bible translation into Turkmen has a long history: the first biblical portion, the Gospel of Matthew, was translated by American Presbyterian missionary James Bassett in 1880 and published by the British and Foreign Bible Society [2]. Translation work ceased after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and did not resume until the founding of IBT in 1978 [2].

References

[1] Institute for Bible Translation, "Turkmen Projects," https://ibtrussia.org/Turkmen/projects [2] Wikipedia, "Bible translations into Turkmen," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_Turkmen

Language and People

Turkmen (ISO 639-3: tuk) is spoken by approximately 7,061,000 people in Afghanistan. [Glottolog: turk1304]