Translations of Genesis into modern Belarusian language

Abstract

The article presents a lexical and grammatical analysis of three translations of the Book of Genesis into Belarusian. The lexis and morphology in translations by J. Stankiewicz, W. Siomucha and Wł. Czerniawski are analysed and described. The focus is mainly on dialectal and archaic vocabulary and occasional lexis not listed in explanatory dictionaries of the modern Belarusian literary language. Also described is the presence in the texts of morphological forms different from those existing in the modern Belarusian language and a series of peculiar word formation structures. The lexis and its forms, occurring in parallel in the three relevant contexts, make it possible to define the „toolkit” of each of the translators.