The Kurdish ‘Wiki’ dictionary has grown to an astonishing 650,000 pages by using the same software that made Wikipedia so comprehensive, it was reported in April.
It translates dozens of languages to and from Kurdish, which all suits the Kurds who interact with so many different languages across Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and now Western nations too.
Started by Kurdish pioneers, ku.wiktionary. org is a secular dictionary, but Christians came on board with a passion to make ‘the most important words in the world understandable’.
As the Bible was being translated, it became clear that a comprehensive dictionary would aid both translators and preachers. A small team in northern Iraq spent two years combing through the Bible drafts making sure every Bible word is carefully documented. The result is an extraordinary enriching of the Kurdish language. ‘When the Bible is translated,’ one of the lexicographers explained, ‘a language goes through a furnace. It emerges purer and stronger, as a language made ready for serious intellectual endeavour.’
The Wiktionary covers mainly the northern dialect of Kurdish, but is now incorporating the Sorani dialect too. This goes hand-in-hand with Bible translation at an exciting time: the Sorani Bible was published in 2017, and the Behdini NT is due to be printed later in 2019.
