The Good Book gets a modern translation

The best-selling book of all time is back with a new Czech translation, and those responsible for the work say it helps catapult the country back into the European cultural mainstream.

"The Bible is part of basic literacy," says Alexandr Flek, lead translator on the project. "For years, we have been culturally illiterate in the heart of Europe."

Translators labored for 15 years on this latest edition of the Bible. Texts in their ancient languages - Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament, Ancient Greek in the New Testament - served as source material.

"The Bible has been the source of so much great art and literature," Flek says, pointing to Renaissance paintings depicting biblical stories. "We were cut off from this mostly by the communists. We translated this Bible as literature. We tried to make it sound beautiful."

Only two other Czech translations of the Bible exist: the Kralice Bible, which dates from the late-16th century, and the Ecumenical Bible of 1979.

The Kralice Bible is widely seen as a key foundation of the modern Czech language. As elites in the 18th and 19th centuries increasingly used German, "the Czech language almost disappeared," said Flek, calling the phenomenon "linguistic oppression."

A nationalist movement in the 19th century sought to revive what had largely become a language spoken among rural peasants. Josef Jungmann's landmark Czech-German dictionary of the 1830s used the Kralice Bible for its core, borrowing peasant colloquial phrases and words from other Slavic languages. Efforts were further bolstered as Czech speakers from the countryside increasingly moved to cities.

During the 20th century, literary and spoken Czech became increasingly synonymous. This new translation seeks to produce a book that reads the way Czechs speak today.

"We wanted a standard Bible in standard Czech," said Flek.

A team of 10 worked on the project: six Czech language experts and four biblical scholars. A piece of software called Bibleworks helped the scholars search ancient texts for recurring phrases or linguistic themes. The project was funded largely by donations, with a few small grants. Donations came from as far away as the United States, and the eventual printer of the book was in Holland.

The attention given to the new Bible, still only in its first days of release, has been enormous. A large crowd gathered for an official launch April 9 at Betlémská Chapel, best known as the place where Jan Hus used to preach in Czech vernacular. In addition to a slew of mainstream media coverage, more than 80 Czech cities had public Bible readings over the Easter holiday weekend. Some held events in which the Bible was read in its entirety, which takes three consecutive days and nights. The scholarly community is also taking note.

"The text is written in a smooth, perhaps even too contemporary, Czech," says Josef Vintr, at the University of Vienna's Institute of Slavic Studies. "It is a very bold translation especially in comparison with the older one."

Josef Bartoň of the Catholic Theological Faculty at Charles University calls the book "readable, smooth and fresh."

An initial run of 50,000 books saw 25,000 sold to distributors within a week, a second printing is in the works. The new Bible should eventually be available almost anywhere books are sold.

After working 15 years on the project, one wonders what is next for Flek.

"Giving birth is not the end," he says. "You run a marathon, and you just cross the finish line."

Benjamin Tallis can be reached at
features@praguepost.com