Sum: Rusyn texts

[Daniel Buncic]

Dear SEELANGers,

on 14 July I posted a question about available Rusyn texts that also exist
in the other East Slavic languages, so that they could be used in a synopsis
of all the East Slavic languages like this Parable of the Talents (Matthew
25:14-30) in Church Slavonic, (Old) Ruthenian, Russian, Belarusian and
Ukrainian, which is unfortunately missing Rusyn:
    http://www.uni-bonn.de/~dbuncic/ostslav/talente.pdf

First of all, such texts would probably be Bible translations, but also the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights with its 329 language versions is
usually a good basis to compare living languages:
    http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/navigate/alpha.htm
Unfortunately, there is no Rusyn translation of this available yet.

Terri Tickle MILLER found me a parallel Ukrainian-Rusyn text, viz. the
instructions on the 2001 Slovak census forms:
    http://www.statistics.sk/webdata/slov/scitanie/tlaciva/verzie.htm

Elaine RUSINKO has provided me, first, with an explanation why there has
been no complete Rusyn Bible so far: "Until the mid-19th century and even
beyond, the intelligentsia promoted the use of the local version of Church
Slavonic (Slaveno-Rusyn) as the Rusyn literary language. Therefore, the only
translation of the Bible that originated in the region was done in 1809 in
Church Slavonic. It was never translated into the Subcarpathian vernacular."

Second, she told me about two projects to translate the Bible into Rusyn:
"Father Frantisek Krajnjak has translated the Epistles and Gospels for
Sundays and Holydays of the Liturgical Year and The Gospel according to
Saint John, but these are not widely available. You can find information and
a few hard-to-read sample pages here:
    http://www.rusyn-rusnak.szm.sk/main.htm.
Click on tserkov', grekokatolicka, and evanhelija. I am told that the Gospel
of St. John will be uploaded at this site soon, and there are some other
plans underway to make it available elsewhere on the web."

The most useful texts available online (also pointed out to me by Elaine
Rusinko) are the probes of the translation Father Dimitrij Sidor in Uzhhorod
is working on:
  Psalms 1 - 8:
    http://www.karpatorusyns.org/more.php?id=107_0_1_0_C17
  John 1:1 - 9:13:
    http://www.karpatorusyns.org/more.php?id=79_0_1_0_C17

These texts were very suitable to make up a synopsis of the Wedding at Cana
(John 2:1-11) in Church Slavonic, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Rusyn:
    http://www.uni-bonn.de/~dbuncic/ostslav/kana.pdf
Unfortunately, this synopsis is still lacking (Old) Ruthenian, because only
a part of the printed Bible translation by Cjapinski (c. 1570) has survived
(Matthew 1:1 - Mark 14:10), and I haven't yet been able to lay my hands on
the Peresopnytsya Gospel (1556-61), though it was obviously edited in Kyiv
in 2001.

Peter ŽEŇUCH has given me a Rusyn newspaper from Slovakia, the "Narodny
Novinky".

Unfortunately, I have received no reaction whatsoever from Rusnaks in Serbia
and Croatia, although I sent queries to several e-mail addresses of Rusnak
organizations I found on the web. However, Yugoslavo-Rusyn translations of
the Gospels and the Psalter appeared in print in 1985 and 2003,
respectively:
    cf. http://www.ruskeslovo.com/novik/index.htm

Thanks a lot to everyone who provided information. Special thanks to Elaine
Rusinko, who also promised to keep me informed about further developments
and who offered to provide contact to Father Dimitrij Sidor, one of the
Bible translators mentioned above.

Daniel Buncic
===============================================
Slavistisches Seminar der Universität Bonn
Lennéstraße 1, D-53113 Bonn
Telefon: +49 228 73-7203
E-Mail: dbuncic at web.de, d.buncic at uni-bonn.de
Homepage: http://www.uni-bonn.de/~dbuncic/
===============================================

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