> 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.