2011
marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James
Version of the Bible in 1611. The project was the undertaking of the
new House of Stuart which sought to put its stamp on English cultural,
religious and political life. It was also intended to end a
centuries-old debate about whether English (not Latin or French) was the
accepted language of educated communication in England. To accomplish
this, James I launched the 17th Century equivalent of the Manhattan
Project, by assembling a team of 54 linguists, historians and
theologians from Cambridge and Oxford who worked virtually full time for
eight years. Most of the participants were from Southeastern England
which gave the final product a distinct regional flavor.
A
slightly more modest effort was recently completed to produce a
parallel product in Carpatho-Rusyn. A team composed of Dr. Anna Plišková of the University of Prešov , Fr. František Krajňák
of the Slovak Association of Rusyn Organizations and Josif Kudzej,
translated the Gospels from Church Slavonic into what might be called
the Prešov standard
of written Rusyn. The project was commissioned by the World Rusyn
Congress and the published volume is 1048 pages in length with both
Cyrillic and Latin alphabet sections (ISBN 978-80-88-769-92-7).
The
work which was completed in 2009 will settle some debates and no doubt
precipitate fresh ones about the grammatical useages and vocabulary
choices of Krajňák
and Kudzej, who are after all, from different villages (Kamjunka and
Njagiv, respectively). Nonetheless, the translation of a major piece of
world literature signifies that Rusyn is no longer a gaggle of dialects
but is firmly on the road to literary standardization .
C-RS
would like to express its appreciation to Karen Varian, President of
the Rusin Society of Minnesota, for making this important work available
to us.
Written by: John Schweich, C-RS trustee.
