Vietnamese people in the Czech Republic are seeking ways to preserve the collection of books and documents about Vietnam left by late Czech linguistic professor Ivo Vasilijev, an expert on Vietnamese studies and a good friend of Vietnam.

Vietnamese Ambassador Truong Manh Son pays tribute to Dr. Ivo Vasiljev 

Dr. Ivo Vasiljev is known for his dedication to and love for Vietnam who left the Vietnamese community in the Czech Republic a very meaningful heritage – the Czech-Vietnamese dictionary, co-authored with Vietnamese engineer Nguyen Quyet Tien to help Czech-born Vietnamese learn their mother language. 

It is not only a dictionary but a bilingual encyclopedia providing knowledge on many areas, ranging from society, culture, history to geography and biology.

Vasiljev died in October 23, 2016 at the age of 81 when he just started to write the fifth out of six volumes of the dictionary.

In May 2016, the encyclopedia won the second prize of the Dictionary of the Year award by the Union of Interpreters and Translators of the Czech Republic despite only three volumes were released. 

Vasiljev interpreted for President Ho Chi Minh when a Czechoslovakian delegation visited Vietnam in 1966. He was the first Czech to translate Nhat Ky Trong Tu (Diary in Prison) into the Czech language and also researched Vietnamese ancient heritage and old scripts.

Nguyen Quyet Tien, the co-author of the Czech-Vietnamese dictionary, told Vietnam News Agency that he is still determined to complete the six-volume encyclopedia as his late fellow’s will.

Ha Manh Hung, a Vietnamese in Ceske Budejovice, has an idea to archive and use valuable documents and thousands of books Vasiljev left to his society in Czech.

Sharing Hung’s view, President of the Vietnamese People Association in the Czech Republic Hoang Dinh Thang said it is necessary to preserve the professor’s heritages and the association is discussing ways to protect these documents for Vietnam’s next generations in the European country.-VNA