Prague (VNA) – Vietnamese expatriates in the Czech Republic have gathered in Ceske Budejovice city to mourn Ivo Vasiljev, a local expert in Vietnamese studies who recently died.
Delivering a eulogy for Vasiljev, Vietnamese Ambassador to the Czech Republic Truong Manh Son called him a Czech with a Vietnamese soul.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Ivo Vasiljev initiated and ran a faculty on Vietnamese study at the Charles University in Prague.
In his 70s, Ivo Vasiljev co-authored four out of six volumes of the Czech-Vietnamese dictionary. The dictionary won second prize of the Dictionary of the Year award by the Union of Interpreters and Translators of Czech Republic on May 13 this year.
He also translated the Prison Diary of the late President Ho Chi Minh into Czech.
The Vietnamese admired him for his excellent Vietnamese, with some saying he could speak the language like a newsreader from Hanoi.-VNA