The new translation of the Bible - a joint effort by the Saint Jerome Catholic Bible Society and Hungarofest's Renaissance Programme Office -- is expected to reach many of the 800,000 Roma in Hungary as well as the millions of other Lovari speakers around the world, said deputy director of Hungarian Catholic Radio Judit Juhász.
The Renaissance Programme Office contributed HUF 6 million to the translation, said director Bernadett Gárdos.
"It was obvious that the translation of the Bible is a work worthy of support," Gárdos said. "Experiencing God needs to be re-discovered in the 21st century."
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Zoltán Vesho-Farkas, the Bible's translator, said he had to borrow words from Hindi and introduce other foreign theological expressions in the translation because some words do not exist in Lovari. Regardless, "God speaks to them in their own language, giving this people with a troubled destiny something to grab on to," he said.
The Lovari Bible's first print run was 2,000 copies.
Béla Tarjányi, who heads the Saint Jerome Catholic Bible Society, noted that the New Testament was translated into Lovari already in 2003.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI) / Photo: MTI
