BIRTH OF A MULTI-LINGUAL SHORT STORY

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.

Story of the further 27 languages

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:

OTP EGER 1177339100604996

Here are the 77 languages into which my short story has already been translated:

1. Arikaans 2. Armenian 3. Arabic 4. Azeri 5. Breton 6. Bulgarian 7. Catalan 8. Chichewa 9. Chinese 10. Ancient Greek 11. Croatian 12. Czech 13. Danish 14. English 15. Esperanto 16. Estonian 17. Fijian 18. Finnish 19. Flemish 20. French 21. Frisian 22. Friuli 23. German 24. Gipsy 25. Glosa 26. Hanti 27. Hebrew 28. Hindi 29. Holland 30. Hungarian 31. Ibo 32. Interlingua 33. Irish 34. Italian 35. Japanese 36. Karelian 37. Komi-Permiak or Zyrian 38. Korean 39. Lapponic 40. Latin 41. Lettish 42. Lithuanian 43. Luba 44. Manx 45. Modern Greek 46. Mongol 47. Nenets or Jurak-Samoyedic 48. Norwegian 49. Persian 50. Polish 51. Portuguese 52. Romanian 53. Runic script 54. Russian 55. Ruthenian 56. Sard 57. Saxon in Transsylvania 58. Serbian 59. Sinhalez 60. Slovakian 61. Slovenian 62. Spanish 63. Swahili 64. Swedish 65. Swiss German 66. Tamil 67. Turkish 68. Ukrainian 69. Unitario 70. Vikto 71. Volapük 72. Votyak or Udmurt 73. Welsh 74. Zulu 75. Bengali 76. Malaj 77. Azerbajani