Looking up a verse from the Psalms in Church Slavonic (for the curious, it was Psalm 41:6, beginning “Вскую прискорбна еси, душе моя?,” which is 42:5 in Western Protestant numbering, KJV “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?”; see this LH post for вскую ‘why’), I was introduced by Google to the STEP Bible. It has an amazing variety of languages, from Abau to Zou; that link takes you to the ESV Genesis, where if you hover over a highlighted word you get the original Hebrew and a summary of occurrences in the Bible. The Church Slavonic Elizabeth Bible (1757) doesn’t have the old letters, abbreviations, and accents of the POMOG site I generally use, but you can copy and paste from it, which is a huge advantage. And I suspect it will come in handy for all sorts of languages. For you to enjoy and explore (to quote John Nowacki, the morning classical-music guy on our local PBS station).
STEP Bible.
October 4, 2022 by 13 Comments
By “Western,” I think you mean “Protestant.” It’s 41:6 in the Vulgate (“Quare tristis es, anima mea?”). By contrast, the 1926 Esperanto version at the STEP site follows the KJV numbering (“Kial vi malĝojas, ho mia animo?”).
Bah! No Oti-Volta languages at all …
Which actually strikes me as a bit surprising, as a fair number of versions are freely available as e.g. Android apps, and are generally produced by SIL-adjacent organisations, who would presumably be well disposed to cooperating on things like copyright; moreover, they do have versions in languages with nowhere near as many speakers as the bigger WOV languages like Mooré. PNG seems particularly well represented, for some reason … Africa is relatively poorly provided for overall, in fact.
Still, it’s evidently a work in progress, and presumably has not actually been going very long. (The SB Constitution is dated 29 March 2021.)
By “Western,” I think you mean “Protestant.”
Sorry, I was raised Lutheran so I forget these distinctions. Fixed!
Still, it’s evidently a work in progress, and presumably has not actually been going very long.
Yeah, I was surprised I hadn’t seen it before.
Separately, while you can understand while it’s not included in a lot of translation-comparison sites like this one, I think there’s a strong case that for the Psalms specifically, the canonical/traditional English version to be compared with the Church Slavonic or what have you is *not* the KJV but the Coverdale translation of approx. 75 years earlier which has been preserved unto this present day by being recited/chanted in (a now-decreasing percentage of) Anglican services and for that purpose is printed bound with the Book of Common Prayer. THat has the relevant verse as 42:6, beginning (in modernized spelling) “Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul.”
Modern printings tend to silently update the original spelling (“Why art thou so full of heuynes (O my soule),” at least according to one internet transcription). STEP seems to have at least two pre-KJV translations, but not (thus far) the so-called “Great Bible” of 1539 wherein could be found Coverdale’s Psalter.
“but you can copy and paste from it, which is a huge advantage” – PDFs are where кракозябры are stll spoken:-)
For Елизаветинская библия you can also try bible.by. E.g. https://bible.by/verse/1/1/1/
Въ нача́лѣ сотворѝ бг҃ъ не́бо и҆ зе́млю.
(of ocurse you know about the site)
Thanks, I’d seen it but forgotten about it: Вскѹ́ю приско́рбна є҆сѝ, дѹшѐ моѧ̀; и҆ вскѹ́ю смѹща́еши мѧ̀; ѹ҆пова́й на бг҃а, ѩ҆́кѡ и҆сповѣ́мсѧ є҆мѹ̀, сп҃се́нїе лица̀ моегѡ̀ и҆ бг҃ъ мо́й.
Псалтирь 41:6 — Пс 41:6: https://bible.by/verse/19/41/6/
Now, is there a similar site for another most translated book, namely Le Petit Prince / маленький принц /…. / الأمير الصغير / الأمير الصّغيَّر ?
Well, there can’t be one:(
Sight. One good thing about being born in USSR is not taking this situation as normal.
That’s just one reason I’m glad I’ve devoted myself to Russian — everything’s available online. Whenever I try to access things written in other languages, I become indignant.
I wish there was variety of translations of Bible into Russian, unfortunately the Sinodal translation is very archaic and new translations – there are fewer of them then in English and they are copyrighted.
I was expecting a Step Bible to be one which wondered why your soul had stepped down 😀
The STEP Bible site was a tremendous resource when I was translating Vodolazkin’s Лавр — it was very easy to compare translations.