The above appeal reached my readers and some of them joined into the
game. With their help and suggestions from new and old friends,
another 27 languages came together in the last 4 years.
Here you have the story of this collection:
A retired chief of ophthalmology phoned me to say he had read my book,
enjoyed it, liked the idea and had a lot of pen-friends around the
world. He collected 8 languages for me (Afrikaans, Chicheva, Saxon
in Transylvania, Portuguese, Swahili, Welsh, Zulu and Manx).
We had a French guest and it came to light that he lived in Bretagne
and his neighbours mother-tongue is Breton, so after returning home
he sent me the Breton translation.
The Hanti translation was promised me some years ago during the
Ugro-Finn writers meeting in Eger by a woman writer and she sent me
the Hanti translation by manuscript which I could hardly read and
transliterate. I asked her in a letter to type it but she did not
answer. Later on I looked for somebody who knew Hanti in Budapest
and Szombathely but I was not successful in finding one. In the end
I put this hardly legible text into the second edition.
One of my dear library visitors in the school, Jutka Adorján liked my
book and told me her cousin was of the Ibo mother-tongue and asked
him, the agriculture student, to translate the short story into this
African language.
I got to know fans of artificial languages as enthusiastic people.
Thanks to Vilmos Bõsz, the creator of the Vikto language for allowing
me to use it in the first edition of my book. He has a rather large
pen- and language friend circle and through his efforts I received
additional translations in 4 more artificial languages. These
languages (Interlingua, Volapük, Glosa and Unitario) came from
Budapest, Germany and England. From Lithuania I received the
Lithuanian translation which was interpreted by the wife and daughter
of a man who wrote me an accompanying letter in Interlingua. My
eldest brother, a sculptor has an Armenian sculptor friend who
translated the Armenian text.
Another sculptor friend of my brother, Mihály Bohn has trouble with
his kidney so he has to go for dialysis 3 times a week. There, in
his hospital bed, pleaded with his nurse, a medical student, to
translate the story into Persian, his mother tongue.
And again laryngologists. A colleague of my husband who knew about
my language gathering enthusiasm discovered that a new laryngologist
in the Szeged HNO Clinic speaks two languages not yet present in my
book. He asked this young doctor to translate the text into his
mothers and fathers language respectively. I got the Azeri and the
Persian translation from him and when later on I got acquainted with
him personally, he said he liked the idea of gathering more languages
and he would like to put The Norwegian Bible short story onto the
internet. Perhaps then I would get more translations in additional
languages. I already had the Persian, but the Azeri was new, so I
put it happily into the second edition of my book.
> My colleague, a teacher of Latin who made the Latin translation,
requested a Sardinian translation from his Sardinian friend.
> The Sinhalese translation also come from Canada as we spent one and
a half months there on a scholarship trip. My colleague there
visited his old family friend who is of Sinhalese nationality. The
Sinhalese friend has finally sent me his translation after four years.
> Mongolian is also of HNO origin. My husband operated on a
Mongolian young lady.
Dear my new translator!
This short story is already translated into 77 different languages.
If you know of a language not presented in my list, would you please
translate the short story into this language and send it to me.
Please write me the name of numbers 1-10 and 100 in your language as
well and please write me some words about your language in English.
I kindly ask you to give me your name, job, town and country. Send
your translation by mail to me please. E-mail is not good for
languages written with diacritical marks or with non Latin letters.
My address is: Martinovitsné Kutas Ilona, 3300 Eger, Széchenyi u. 9.
Hungary.
If you have some questions, do not hesitate to write me on e-mail.
My e-mail address is:
tenger@eszeg.sulinet.hu
I made a book with the first 50 languages in 1994. In February 2001 a
new book has been issued with 77 languages in it. When I will have
another 23 languages, I would like to publish the third edition with
100 languages in it in the year of 2004. Your translation can be
involved in this book and naturally I will send you a complimentary
copy in 2005.
Another request to you or to the readers of the E-book version of my
book
(www.mek.iif.hu/porta/szint/human/szepirod/modern/martinov) :
If you have the possibility to send me a computer and a scanner,
please do it. I have a computer in my workplace, in a secondary
school library, I wrote my two books on this computer in weekends and
in afternoons, but in the next 3-4 year I will retire and I need a
computer at home to continue this language collecting game. My final
aim is to collect translations of my short story in all the 2899
languages of the world.
My other problem is as follows: The second edition of my book was
issued in private edition in February 2001. As I have promised my
translators, I would like to send a copy to each of them, (to about
66-68 addresses) but posting of a book costs 1800 Forints. My
husband does not give me more money (he paid the editing costs), so I
need 120.000 Forints (USD 420) for the expenses of postage. My
invoice number is as follows: