Kvantitatiivne vaade Uue Testamendi 1630.–1730. aastate tõlgetele
A quantitative approach to Estonian New Testament translations from the 1630s to the 1730s

Summary/Abstract: The article compares Estonian translations of the New Testament from the 1630s to the 1730s, covering the period from the first extant publications of pericopes until the first full Bible. All existing 28 versions of the gospel of Luke were studied: 21 texts in the North Estonian (or Tallinn) standard language, and seven texts in the South Estonian (or Tartu) standard language. The 62 verses from this gospel which occurred in all 28 translations were compared in five aspects: phonetic, inflectional, morphosyntactic, lexical and orthographical. Tables registering these differences formed input for computer analysis measuring the proximity of translation pairs.The analysis revealed that the first translations in the Tartu language differed greatly from one another in all aspects except orthography, whereas the translations in the Tallinn language can mostly be seen as a series of revisions of the same text. The standard languages were reformed significantly by the Wastne Testament (1686) in South Estonian and Johann Hornung’s translation in North Estonian (written in 1687–88, and preserved as a copy from 1694 called the München manuscript). In contrast to the South Estonian standard language, the language reform was not universally accepted at first in the North Estonian standard language.

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