Romanian version of Tale of Kieu donated to Ha Tinh province

 A copy of poet Nguyen Du’s most celebrated work, Tale of Kieu, in Romanian has been donated by Professor Luong Phuong Hau to a memorial house dedicated to him in his hometown province of Ha Tinh.

The book was collected in 1978 by Professor Hau, who used to be a lecturer at Hanoi University of Civil Engineering, while he was doing PhD research in Bucharest, Romania.

The 13x20 cm book, containing 184 pages in good condition, features the Romanian translation of all 3,254 verses of the Tale of Kieu accompanied by a number of illustrations and the translator’s introduction.

The book was published in 1967 by the Bucharest Literature Publishing House with the translation by Radu Moureanu, who translated from Vietnamese scholar Nguyen Van Vinh’s French version.

At that time, few Romanians were well-versed in Vietnam culture and not many Vietnamese literary works were translated into the Romanian language. Before the Tale of Kieu, To Hoai’s Adventures of a Cricket had been translated into Romanian.

Currently Nguyen Du’s memorial house is keeping copies of the Tale of Kieu in various languages including Russian, French, English, German and Spanish.

NDO