The essay is finished, but the story continues.
In May my English pen-friend since 1964 corrected my essay
grammatically and sent me a small white English New Testament.
There was a friendly smile that I have to mention. I got it as an
appreciation for the essay from my son, a former water-polo player
who is now a marathon runner and a folk dancer. He read the essay on
the train to Budapest. He did not say anything but laughed at me. I
think he enjoyed the stories of mine and his fathers.
Instead of answering my Christmas card my half-Polish, half-Slovakian
pen-friend since 1963 sent me a copy of an article. He published my
"Norwegian Bible" in "Zivot", a newspaper of the Slovaks living in
Poland and he wrote an article about our friendship, my grandfather
of Slovakian origin and about the short story.
Now I have my "Norwegian Bible" in three languages: English,
Hungarian and Slovakian. The next move will be to translate it into
another fifteen or more languages. I think I will ask my friends to
do it. I can not master eighteen languages like my grandfather, but
I would like to have the "Norwegian Bible" translated into eighteen
or more languages.
Until now the "Norwegian Bible" served as a mirror. From now on it
works as a magnet. It attracts languages, and through it gathers my
foreign friends, unknown to each other into a team working for me,
and with me on a multi-lingual short story. The essay continues on
its own.
> The half-Hungarian half-Jordanian son of my husbands colleague
visited us in summer and translated the text into Arabic. He wrote
it with very nice handwriting and later on, returning home he typed
it as well.
> I sent the text to Subotica to our friend, a laryngologist. He is
Hungarian, but speaks Serbo-Croatian as well. He told me it would be
better to ask one of his friends, a Serbian by origin to make the
translations.
> My niece and her Slovakian husband made the Czech translation.
> My husband ran the Venice Marathon with a Danish runner, so I asked
this man to translate "The Norwegian Bible" into Danish.
I took my story and the essay with me to Canada where I took part in
an English immersion course. I gave my work to some of our teachers
and to some of my new friends. The responses were as follows:
> I gave it to our professor of Canadian literature, a writer. He
corrected my essay, praised me and encouraged me to write more. I
also had the pleasure of getting acquainted with his first novel
"Winter Tulips" which had been recently published.
> The teacher of Linguistics was a Canadian of "visible minority", a
young lady from East India, who married a white Canadian. I heard
about the problems of being a visible minority first from her, a very
authentic source. She promised to have my text translated into her
mother language later on by her mother, because parents know the
abandoned language better than the second generation. The same
phenomenon occurred at other times during my quest for further
languages. She sent me the translation, but she did not mention
which language it was, and I could not identify it either. So it is
the unknown member of my language company.
> Our teacher of Canadian history read my short story and presented
me with his article which also, was about languages, the role of
bilingualism in the family. He had also written a book about native
Indians in Canada, so I asked him to ask somebody to translate my
story into an ancient Indian language. He tried to organise it, sent
my story to an Indian Cultural Centre to a man who seemed interested.
Our teacher promised to make a small donation to the centre, sent
the material and waited. And waited and waited. Finally he called
them to be told that the man was ill and that nobody else was able to
do the translation. He expressed some surprise but in explanation he
was told that Indian (Native People) languages are mainly an oral
tradition. So I do not have a Canadian Indian translation, but this
story is also an interesting contribution to the language map of the
world as I try to describe it in my final paper.
> There was a security guard in the College where we lived. He
emigrated from Ceylon many years ago. He began to translate my short
story into Tamil, but later on he asked his nephew to continue it.
He told me he was a stationmaster at home and that his nephew was
more educated, so the young man was able to make a better translation.
> I visited my relatives in Toronto. An international company was
there at the party. I met a Latvian woman who was already born in
Canada, but she promised me to ask her 83 year old father to
translate the text into Latvian.
> A great surprise awaited me in Canada. I had a Polish penfriend
thirty years ago. She had visited us in Budapest and I was with her
on a student excursion in the Polish Carpathians. Later on our
friendship was broken off and I knew only that she left Poland for
America, but I did not have her address. During a sight-seeing trip
to Toronto while waiting for my colleagues, I found a telephone box
with a directory in it. A quick idea came to my mind: "Here I am in
America, why not look for my friend. Perhaps she lives somewhere
here!" And I happened to find her name in the directory. What a big
surprise! I phoned her at once. She, too, was so very happy. We
met and had an all-day-long chat about our last 28 years. Naturally
she became my Polish translator. Her friend helped her. For 20
years they had lived there in America and had been speaking English.
Perhaps they could make a better Polish translation together. I
asked them to send me the translation, but I waited and waited in
vain. It is possible she will be lost to me for the next thirty
years33? So I asked another friend, my first publisher, to translate
the text into Polish, my beloved language. However instead of him,
his friend did the translation.
After arriving home I continued to collect languages.
> My colleague at school translated the story into Latin.
> Our friend, a painter, who emigrated to Hungary from Sub-Carpahia,
worked through the Ukrainian, Russian and Ruthenian translations.
> My husbands colleague, who is of Greek origin translated the text
into Modern Greek and asked her friends father to write it down.
She told me she was born in Hungary, so her friends father knew
Modern Greek better then she. The same situation exists in the East
Indian, the Latvian and the Spanish languages, that the elder
generation speaks it better. It is remarkably opposite in Rumanian
and Tamil, where the older generation thinks that the younger knows
the language better.
> I know a math teacher at the Teachers Training College whose hobby
is speaking and teaching Esperanto. Lets ask her! I will have one
translation in an artificial language as well.
> An other teacher at the College, a soloist of Korean origin
translated my text into this Far East language.
> We had a Peace Corps volunteer in the secondary school one year,
who came from Texas. His mother tongue was Spanish, but he asked his
mother to translate my story into Spanish.
> We have a friend, a member of the Rumanian minority which have been
living among Hungarians for 300 years. He told me that although his
mother tongue was Rumanian, his daughter attended a Rumanian
secondary school, so she translated the text into Rumanian and later
on as a Christmas present, my friend sent me their newspaper with
"The Norwegian Bible" in it. I got 720 Fts for the publication as
well.
> I asked one of our Finnish friends to look for a Lappish translator,
and another, a woman, who is Finnish-Swedish bilingual, to translate
the Bible into Swedish. Not she, but her daughter did the job for me.
> Another Finnish friend, a laryngologist translated the text into
Finnish.
> A library director who hosted our librarian delegation in Norway
completed the Norwegian translation.
> I asked my cousin, another granddaughter of our eighteen-lingual
grandfather, to translate it into French. She did it and her 12 year
old half-French half-Hungarian daughter and her French husband helped
her.
> My English penfriend since 1964, who sent me the white New
Testament has a wife of Fijian origin. They promised me a
translation into the language of that far away country.
> An Italian friend translated it into Italian,
> another friend into Croat,
> and one into Slovenian
> a friend of our friends into Hebrew,
> a librarian from Dublin into Irish, and
> the Japanese laryngologist into Japanese. He drew a sketch of me
and my Bible to show that Japanese write and read vertically. He
wrote a long letter as well in which he described his language for my
final paper and in addition he sent me the Japanese Lords Prayer.
> My daughters 84 year old teacher of German, a nun translated my
short story into German. She presented me with her book which has
been recently published. She translated a German book into Hungarian.
"Translating, playing with languages makes people young."--she told
me and dedicated her book to me. If everybody follows through as
promised, I will have my short story in 32 languages. It is almost
twice as many as my grandfathers 18 spoken languages.
In May I handed in my final paper with 31 languages in it, took the
state exam and got my degree as Teacher of English. But the
collecting of languages didnt stop and by Christmas 1993 I had 14
more languages. I began to look for a publisher and when I found one,
I promised him a book with 50 languages in it.
The story of the later 19 languages is as follows:
> The wife of one of our painter friends, a Bulgarian, who has been
living in Hungary since the age of 11, translated "The Norwegian
Bible" into Bulgarian.
> There had been a congress of Finno-Ugric writers in Eger in
September 1993. "So many languages in my town", I thought, "Why not
get acquaintance with some of them?" With the help of my somewhat
forgotten but hastily refreshed Russian knowledge, I spoke with the
representatives of our Hungarian language relatives. Some of them
promised to send me a translation after returning home. From that
congress I have the following languages translated: Karelian, Udmurt,
Estonian, Komi and Nenets. At the congress, I met a Livonian student
who is a representative of a small group of people whose language is
spoken by only 20 people. He promised me the translation but has not
sent it yet. He hasnt even answered my second and third letter
either. In my last letter I asked him to translate the text into
Lituanian as well as Livonian. Since he lives in Riga, Lithuania, I
assume he is bilingual. I hope he will eventually respond as did my
Lappish translator after one and a half years.
> One of our Finnish friends had promised to look for a Lappish
translator. Much time passed and I had given up all hope of ever
getting that translation but now I do have it.
> The next year Venice Marathon brought me two further languages.
After my husband had run the marathon on Sunday, we took a trip to
Verona on Monday. On our way there, a group of four happy, talkative
young people entered our compartment. The three sisters and a
brother spoke an interesting sounding language, unknown to me. I
asked them if they were Swedish. Smiling, they said, "No", but that
I wasnt the first to mistake their language for Swedish. They were
speaking Swiss German. Later on they changed to formal German, so we
could understand them. They promised to translate my short story
into their mother tongue. I received it in one months time. They
wrote that at home they were sitting around the dinner table the same
way that we sat in a round in the train compartment. And sentence by
sentence they translated the text together.
> The next day, our friend the Italian translator took us on a trip
into the Alps. We passed a region where, he said, a small group of
people speak Friuli, a Rheto Romance language. He promised to ask
one of his customers who lives there to make the Friulian translation.
> My eldest brothers Dutch art partner who organizes figure and
medal exhibitions for him, translated the text into Dutch. I wrote
to a Biology professor from Belgium who I met some years ago in Eger
(my home town) and asked him to translate the text into Flemish. I
sent him the list of languages and translators as well, asking him to
fill in his data, also. Instead of the Flemish translation I got a
short letter in which he said he felt it not to be important to write
a Flemish translation since he saw I already had the text in Dutch.
These two languages are, as he wrote, similar in written form, and
only in pronunciation are there some differences.
> He did not make the translation, but some month later another
Belgian couple visited us. Listening to my request they asked for a
typing machine and immediately translated the short story into
Flemish. They also promised me a Cashmirian translation because a
Cashmirian man lives in their village, they ask him to do the work.
Later on they wrote me it was told them that Cashmirian is a spoken
language only, They use Hindi script while writing, but Hindi I
already have. Instead of the Chasmirian they organised an African
language: another friend in their village, couple from Zaire
translated the short story into Luba language.
Later, my short story continued its role as a magnet and brought me
two new friends; two language fans. As I had begun to think about
publishing a book, I had to look for and ask permission for copying
the language descriptions from the writer of the "Lords Prayer in
121 European Languages". Looking for his name in the Budapest
telephone book and finding four Németh Zsigmonds, I had the same good
fortune as I did in my Toronto search. The first number I dialed was
his. He was very friendly. We met in Budapest and went together to
the Indian Embassy. I wanted to ask them about the herd of the
Indian language for which I have translation. He asked about some
language problems pertaining to the preparation of his next book
entitled, "Asias Languages Shown Through the Lords Prayer in
Different Languages." He directed me to a new language at this time
because he sent my story to:
> a man who constructed a new artificial language, Vikto.
Mr. Németh brought me to a friend of his who became interested in me
when she heard I had written about 31 languages with Hebrew among
them. Kató Lomb studies Hebrew at the Budapest University. It is
the 17th language she speaks. She is a synchron translator. She
speaks in 16 languages, but as she said in an interview, the number
of languages by which she has already earned money is about 30. She
wrote four books about languages, her language learning method, other
multilingual people, and her journeys around the world as a
translator. She autographed one of her books and gave it to me. I
had brought two others with me and she autographed those as well.
The fourth title I bought the next week in a secondhand book shop.
In a weeks time I had read all four of the books with much enjoyment.
The next month I invited this lovely pair to our secondary school. I
wanted our students to have the pleasure of getting acquainted with
these two language fans. Mrs. Kató Lomb gave a lecture to the
students about her language learning method, and another lecture for
teachers about how language learning can make the retired persons
everyday life more interesting. Mr. Németh delivered a lecture about
his trip to a far land to find a people who speak a language
distantly relative to Hungarian. He also showed a video film he made
while visiting this Hanti group in Siberia.
> I found someone, my husbands patient, who studied and speaks
Turkish.
> Somebody else translated the text into Hungarian Gipsy language.
> Father of may daughters classmate translated the text into Classic
Greek.
> My eldest brother organised some more languages for me. I went to
the Netherlands and Germany with him to collect his bronze figures
from galleries there. He needed them for his great exhibition in
Budapest. We visited his friend, my Dutch translator Theo, the
Hollander and his wife. They were astonished while I told them I had
translations in 43 languages, they didnt think there were so many
languages in Europe. But later on the wife took a book from the
bookshelf in which we could read there were 2796 languages in the
world and the number of dialects were 7000-8000. So the 50 languages
I plan for my book is only a small slice of this rich world of
languages.
> Theo wanted to enrich my collection so he promised to organise the
West Frisian translation for me, a language spoken in the Netherlands
by a minority group.
> At my brothers friend in Hamburg I met a bilingual Chinese man.
He translated the short story into Chinese.
Now I must finish collecting languages. I have about 50
translations--the number I promised to my sponsor in publishing the
book. Or maybe not. Perhaps I should leave this book open and ask
my reader who may know any language not present here, to translate
the short story into that language and send it to me, (address: 3300
Eger, Széchenyi u. 9. Hungary). In the second edition I would like
to present the other 2746 languages.