In early June, IBT held a seminar in Moscow on what is known in Bible translation circles as Scripture Engagement. The seminar was attended by 21 people from 11 different ethnic groups of Russia and the CIS into whose language IBT has already translated significant portions of the Bible.  Many of the participants were not IBT translation team staff, but rather members of churches that are using IBT’s Scripture translations.

In January 2015 two translation team members from IBT's Avar and Ingush projects traveled to the Holy Land for a 10-day study tour focusing on the historical, geographical and cultural contexts in which the Bible was written. This tour was arranged by the Home for Bible Translators, an organization that for the past two decades has been providing high quality educational programs for Bible translators from around the world to increase their level of expertise in translating the Holy Scriptures...

At the beginning of February IBT held a seminar in our office in Moscow for the purpose of introducing IBT's work to new workers and potential future workers. Participants came from various parts of Russia, including Altai, Yakutia, the Nenets Autonomous Region and the Northern Caucasus. Over the course of several days, seminar participants were introduced to topics that are important for translation team members to know well in their work with IBT: the structure and history of the Old and New Testaments, the historical and cultural context of the Bible, exegesis, translation theory, linguistic analysis, field testing, etc...

From 30 October to 6 November IBT and its partnering Bible translation agencies conducted a seminar for translation teams on the topic of "The Old Testament in the New Testament: Intertextuality in Translation". The seminar was attended by translation teams from 18 different projects within Russia and the CIS, while the lecturers came from various organizations in Russia (A. Desnitsky, A. Somov, V. Voinov, O. Zaprometova), the UK (S. Crisp, D. Gray), Holland (M. de Lang, L. de Regt), and Finland (M. Sivonen).

On April 1-3, IBT and SIL conducted a joint workshop outside Moscow geared towards helping Bible translation teams think through and write up a so-called "translation brief" for their projects. Workshop participants dealt with issues foundational to any translation project, such as: the specific short-term and long-term goals of the project, the intended audience, this audience's perspective on the Bible in light of its own religious and cultural setting, the roles of translation team members, and desired formats for publishing and distributing the Bible translation (such as printed books, audio recordings, electronic publications, etc.).

In mid-November the Institute for Bible Translation held a week-long seminar on translating the poetic books and Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament. The course was attended by 40 participants - translators, editors, co-ordinators and consultants from 15 IBT and SIL Bible translation projects (Avar, Agul, Adygei, Ingush, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karakalpak, Komi Zyryan, Kumyk, Lezgi, Mari-Meadow, Mordvin-Moksha, Tabassaran, Tajik and Udi).

12-15 March 2013 IBT hosted a workshop, whose participants were mostly exegetical advisers. The seminar was devoted to the study of a special software programme called FLEx (full name - FieldWorks Language Explorer), a product of SIL. This programme allows the user to record lexical material, and then to manage, create and export glossaries, to create interlinear texts to analyze features of the discourse of the language, to study the morphology of the language, and also to collect and organize materials related to the target language culture.

From 12 to 16 February 2013 IBT held in its office a workshop for 14 participants from 10 translation projects (Abkhaz, Avar, Chukchi, Digor, Kalmyk, Kumyk, Lak, Lezgi, Nanai and Nogai). Among them were future Bible translators, philological editors, exegetical advisers and comprehension testers. All the participants were professionals and experts in their own fields of knowledge. But in the near future they will have to face a new challenge - to master the art of Bible translation.