Kostandin Kristoforidhi

Kostandin Kristoforidhi
Picture of Kristoforidhi by unknown author
Born	1826 Elbasan, Ottoman Empire (now Albania)
Died	1895 (aged 69)
Pen name	Kristoforidhi
Occupation	translator, writer
Nationality	Ottoman
Ethnicity	Albanian
Period	1846–1895
Notable works	Translation of the New Testament

Kostandin Nelko, known as Kostandin Kristoforidhi, 1826–1895) was an Albanian translator and scholar. He is mostly known for having translated into Albanian the New Testament for the first time in the Gheg Albanian dialect in 1872. He also provided a translation in Tosk Albanian in 1879 thereby improving the 1823 tosk version of Vangjel Meksi. By providing translation in both dialects, he has the merit of founding the basis of the unification of both dialects into a national language.

He was born in Elbasan and from 1847 studied at the Zosimea Greek college in Ioannina, where he helped Johann Georg von Hahn learn Albanian and write a German-Albanian dictionary.

He went to Istanbul in 1857, and drafted a Memorandum for the Albanian language. He stayed in Malta until 1860 in a Protestant seminary, finishing the translation of The New Testament in the Tosk and Gheg dialects. He was helped by Nikolla Serreqi from Shkodër with the Gheg version of the Testament. Nikolla Serreqi was also the propulsor for the use of the Latin alphabet, which had already been used by the early writers of the Albanian literature and Kristoforidhi embraced the idea of a Latin alphabet.

He went to Tunis, where he worked as a teacher until 1865, when a representative of the British and Foreign Bible Society contracted him to work for the company to produce Bible translations into Albanian. He published in 1866 the first Gheg translation of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles; for the many years to come, he continued his work, publishing in the Tosk and Gheg dialects The Psalms (1868, 1869); The New Testament (1879, 1869), Genesis and Exodus (Tosk, 1880); Deuteronomy (Tosk, 1882); The Proverbs and the Book of Isaiah (Tosk, 1884).