Translation and the Reformation in the Eastern Part of the Slovene Ethnic Area

In the 18th century, the translation corpus of the Premurje Protestants was similar to that in Central Slovenia: the first two printed works were a catechism (Mali Katechis­mus, 1715 – translation from Hungarian) and abecedarium (Abecedarium Szlovenszko, 1725). The most important translation achievement is the first translation of the New Commitment from Greek into Slovene (Števan Küzmič, Nouvi Zákon, 1771). After that, the Catholic texts of Mikloš Küzmič established Prekmurje literary norms with translations of ecclesiastical texts from Latin, e.g. Szveti evangyeliomi (1780). Attempts at reaching literary norms also appeared in fiction texts, such as translations of Hungarian romantic poets, e.g., Petőfi, Vörösmarty and Arany in the Prijatel newspaper.

In the 18th century, translations into East-Styrian literary language were modelled on German templates, such as Parchamer’s catechism (1758, 1764, 1777). Normativity was established by Dajnko in the German written grammar (1824), translations of ecclesi­astical texts from German (e.g. gospels, 1817) and Latin (e.g. the beginning of the Old Testament, manuscript 1836). These works were followed by translations of sermons, e.g. Šerf, (1835) and Rižner (1835), or Lah with the translation of the tale of Chris­toph Schmid from German (Leseni križec, 1835). The language used in several texts performed a unifying function, most notably the works by Murko (Grammar, 1832) and the German-Slovene and Slovene-German dictionaries (1833), as well as Slomšek and Krempl with translations of catechism (1826) and gospels (1843).

In addition to the global Latin and Greek, the regional German language of the Kranjska and East Styria region was replaced in Prekmurje by the regional Hungarian language.