Aberdeenshire man translates entire bible into Doric
Gordon Hay spent 17 years completing the project
An Aberdeenshire man has translated the Bible into Doric, a project that took him nearly two decades.
Gordon Hay started translating the New Testament in 2006, completing it in 2012, before starting on the Old Testament.
It's the first time it has ever been published in any Scots dialect.
He said: "I enjoy working in Doric, I enjoy translating into Doric, and this was something that hadn't been done before and I just thought I would do it.
"I was born into a Doric speaking family on a Northeast farm. I spoke Doric at school and all of my friends were Doric speakers."
The language gets its distinct sound from elements of other European languages such as French and German.
The completed version of The Doric Aul Testament is 758 pages long, consisting of over 570,000 words.
"I just think its important that as the native dialect of the area, we keep it alive and don't feel ashamed of it.
Don't let Doric die
"We need not to have it tied up in the past, it needs to be a developing language, a language that's moving forward if its going to survive."
He added: "I think there are signs of that as quite a lot of young people use Doric on social media and invent new words and it's so much tied into the whole history and culture, it will be very sad if it dies out complete."
Mr Hay has also been commissioned by the University of Aberdeen to translate some of Handel's Messiah into Doric.
The retired solicitor said he is determined to keep the language alive.
"The problem over the years has been that Doric was seen as a second class language, the schools very much stamped down on Doric speaking being used in classrooms.
"What we need to do is move away from that and not be ashamed to use Doric in any context to anybody that we're speaking to."