Báró Podmaniczky Pál és a norvég Biblia / Elbeszélés a 18 nyelvü nagyapáról 77 nyelven és rovásírással
The discovery of the world's languages becomes a family inheritance in this unusual little book by Ilona Kutas, a Hungarian school librarian and English teacher. Its heart is a single short story, "The Norwegian Bible," written about an evening in an Oslo hotel room with a bilingual English-Norwegian Bible, and dedicated to the author's grandfather, Baron Pál Podmaniczky, a Lutheran theology professor who had mastered eighteen languages. Friends and strangers across the globe then translated that one story into 77 tongues — 58 European, 13 Asian, 6 African — plus Esperanto and runic script, each version accompanied by notes on the language and the person who rendered it.
What began as a classroom exercise grew into a decades-long "language-collecting game" and a portrait of friendship across borders. The book honors a beloved grandfather's legacy of faith and learning while celebrating linguistic diversity itself, inviting readers to compare grammars, trace kinships between languages, and join in by contributing a translation of their own.
How it begins
{editor: This is an English only excerpt from the original book. To view the entire range of 77 languages, stories behind each translation and photographs of the author's family, please download the full, original book, bblia10.pdf. This PDF version will require a special viewer, Adobe Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded, free of charge, from http://www.adobe.com.} Copyright (C) 2002 Martinovitsné Kutas Ilona Baron Pál Podmaniczky and the Norwegian Bible © 1994, Martinovitsné Kutas Ilona A short story about the 18 lingual grandfather in 77 languages and in runic script Martinovitsné Kutas Ilona The English text was supervised by Grace Tinnell "First edition appeared in 1994 by the title The Norwegian Bible" PREFACE My first, and until now, only short story has become a device with which I could make friends from all over the world and create new friendships. These old and new friends have translated my short story into 58 European, 13 Asian and 6 African languages. Because of its lucidity, "The Norwegian Bible" short story has lended itself particularly well in representing the languages in Europe and some outside of Europe. As a basis for qualification and description of languages I used the book "Lords Prayer in 121 European Languages" in which the prayers were collected, compiled and the commentaries were written by Zsigmond Németh.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.