Abstract:
The pre-Reformation and Reformation social and religious movements contributed to
the development of biblical and religious as well as journalistic and polemical writings,
which had a significantly positive impact on the increase in functional efficiency and
standardisation of European languages. Translations of The Bible played a special role
in the development of European languages as texts with the highest linguistic prestige.
Not only did Luther’s Bible (1522–1534) contribute to the unification of German
literary language, but its 16th-century translations had an outstanding influence on the
development of Dutch and the Scandinavian languages, i.e. Danish, Swedish and Icelandic.
The language of Protestant translations of The Bible was regarded in the 16th–
17th centuries in France and England as a model of stylistic excellence. Prior to the 16th
century, there were fairly rich Celtic writings (Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish), but
they were undoubtedly greatly enriched between the second half of the 16th century
and the first quarter of the 19th century by Protestant translations of The Bible and other
religious texts. The translation work by the Czech brothers (ideological supporters of
the Reformation) – Blahoslav’s New Testament (1564) and the Kralice Bible (1579–1593) –
is a symbol of the linguistic prowess of the 16th-century Czech language as well as the
basis for its rebirth in the 19th century. The linguistic consciousness of the Slovaks was
long influenced by the Kralice Bible. Hungarian and Polish Reformation translations of
The Bible enriched the history of these languages considerably. A number of European
languages owe their actual literary beginnings to the Reformation: Finnish and Estonian
(Finnish languages), Latvian and Lithuanian (Baltic languages), Upper Lusatian, Lower
Lusatian and Slovene (Slavonic languages). In Croatia, prints financed by Reformation
supporters appeared in the 16th century. The Serbian Orthodox New Testament (1847)
by Karadžić and The Old Testament (1868) by Daničić were published by the Protestant
publishing house of the British Bible Society in London, which also published a translation
of the Bulgarian Catholic Slaveykov Bible (1871).
