Missionary Translators: Translations of Christian Texts in East Asia - Book Review

Kiaer, Jieun, and Alessandro Bianchi, Giulia Falato, Pia Jolliffe, Kazue Mino, and Kyungmin Yu. Missionary Translators: Translations of Christian Texts in East Asia. London and New York: Routledge, 2022. xiv+114 pages, including an index.

I read this book with both delight and fascination. Though highly academic and technical, it opened my eyes to the complexity of missionary translation work in East Asia. The scholarship is superb, the chapters are well organized, and the issues addressed are significant. The authors’ mastery of the languages involved – modern European, biblical, and East Asian – bears fruit in studies which are outstanding in their precision and exactness.

Despite my own focus on Christianity in China, I found these studies of translations in Korean and Japanese, as well as Chinese, quite illuminating. The challenges facing translators, especially missionary translators, appear to be the same, regardless of time period or of the linguistic contexts in which they labor.

Having undertaken several translation projects myself, I am aware of the difficulties involved and of the complex and competing issues at stake.[1] As a result, I have great respect for the missionaries who achieved such success, even though it was imperfect, as well as for the scholars whose knowledge, both deep and extensive, enabled them to pen these insightful chapters.

I am struck also by the broad and deep learning of the missionaries, both the highly educated Jesuits and the Protestants. They had to know Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as the local languages, in order to begin translating. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese are notoriously difficult, but these foreigners, after years of diligent study, acquired the ability not only to speak these languages, but also to compose literary works and translate the Bible.

In the following review, I shall only present the highlights and conclusions of each chapter. The substance of these studies consists of the detailed analyses and information the authors present. The extensive bibliographies at the end of each chapter open up fascinating avenues for further investigation.

Chapter 1: “Language learning and negotiation,” by Giulia Falato, describes how Jesuits in China went about acquiring mastery of literary Chinese, such that it “was thanks to their literary eloquence and stylistic refinement that the seventeenth-century missionaries could embark on an ambitious translation project, which brought Western learning directly to the court of the Ming emperors” (17).

Two early Jesuit catechisms are analyzed, showing that the translators used both existing Chinese words and transliterations from European words, the latter used especially for proper names and liturgical terms.

Chapter 2, by Pia Jolliffe and Alessandro Bianchi: “Jesuit translation practices in sixteenth-century Japan,” focuses on the translation of the Extracts from the Acts of the Saints (“Sanctos”), a hagiographical work intended for devotional use.

“One of the most striking features of Sanctos and some other [Christian Editions] is the choice to render Japanese text using the Latin script, rather than Japanese script. The Jesuits had developed a system of transliteration/transcription,” perhaps to make these works “more accessible to European missionaries who did not [yet] have mastery of the Japanese script” (29).

Additionally, the use of the Latin alphabet “allowed a seemingly seamless integration into the Japanese text of foreign vocabulary and technical terms that lacked direct Japanese equivalents. This provided an efficient solution to deal with the translation of culturally specific words, phrases and concepts that could not easily be rendered from one language into another” (32). Translators of Christian texts in all non-Western languages faced this same challenge, and employed different strategies for achieving readability and comprehensibility.

Another strategy was to use existing Buddhist (or, Daoist, or shamanistic) terms.

Quite interestingly, the Jesuits chose to translate a large number of stories from a major work by the Spanish Dominican friar, Luis de Granada. The authors surmise that they thought de Granada’s Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic theology were quite compatible with the educational and theological preferences of the Jesuits. (Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican.)

The translators wisely chose to omit some of de Granada’s illustrations and examples, and to highlight some features of his text that would appeal to Japanese, such as martyrs who demonstrated great fortitude in their heroic struggles against sin and death. They also followed the advice of a Japanese man to employ Buddhist terms to translate some Christian words. They worked in teams composed of foreigners and Japanese, including at least one highly educated Japanese woman who had become a Christian.

“It is an interesting coincidence that many of those who were involved in translating a book about martyrs – or their students and offspring – died as martyrs, just like the majority of the saints in the book” (52).

Chapter 3: “The making of the Korean Bible,” by Jieun Kiaer and Kyungming Yu, consists of a “case study of James S. Gale’s New Testament and Genesis translations.”

In this brief history of the Bible in Korean and the writers and translators involved in its creation, the authors “show how early Protestant missionaries played an important role in establishing vernacular grammar and speech styles during a time of flux in the Korean language” (3).

They “explore these issues using a case study of Gale’s Korean Bible (1925), focusing on how he used his creativity to adapt the text to resonate with Korean readers by considering the particularities of the Korean language and culture. For example, he incorporated Korean New-Confucian values such as filial piety into the text as well as innovating a new Korean term for ‘God,’ hana-nim, [and] taking advance of the Korean honorific system in order to succinctly express the monotheistic nature of Christianity” (57).

The Bible was first translated into Korean by John Ross (1842–1915) with the help of Korean assistants. Though his translation reflected the northwestern Korean dialect of his helpers, it found a great reception, selling over 16 million copies between 1895 and 1934.

James Gale also worked closely with Korean assistants, with whom he enjoyed close friendships. The missionaries did not just rely on their helpers, however; they also diligently studied the Korean and Chinese languages to enable them to participate fully in the translation process. In time, however, the translation project came under the aegis of the Korean branch of the Bible Society, founded in 1905. There is a very helpful chart showing the timeline of the versions that were produced between 1882 and 1898.

The missionaries wanted to translate the Bible into the Korean vernacular, but there was no existing written model for them to use. For more than 450 years, official documents had been composed in Chinese characters, and the literati wanted to retain their mastery of this difficult writing medium. To overcome this challenge, missionaries first produced a series of vernacular Korean dictionaries and grammars.

Case study: James Gale’s Bible

James Scarth Gale, a gifted linguist, acquired a knowledge of spoken and written Korean “far more sophisticated than his [missionary] peers” and produced numerous dictionaries and grammars. He also became quite attuned to the nuances of Korean literature and rendered some Korean works into English. Working with his wife and Korean helpers, he published an illustrated edition of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. He also became a highly skilled reader of classical Chinese literature.

Gale used his knowledge of both Chinese and vernacular Korean to write and translate using a combination of both Chinese characters and vernacular Korean. The result was a hybrid style, in which “pure Korean words would be written in Hangeul [the vernacular], while Sino Korean words would be written in Classical Chinese” (69). This allowed him to express theological terms in Chinese characters that educated Koreans could readily understand. In this way, he also maintained continuity with Chinese ways of thinking, which he thought were integral to Korean language and culture.

Controversially, he used existing Korean shamanistic or Buddhist religious terms. “As the Bible became more and more influential in Korea, these roots are now more often more closely associated with their Christian contexts” (72). Even more controversial was his practice of leaving out important words, including “God,” on the advice of his Korean assistants, who persuaded him that the Korean honorific terms in the passages being translated made the repetition of “God” unnecessary and harsh to the Korean ear.

The Official Board of Translators held the final authority. The majority on this Board felt that Gale had gone too far in eliminating words from the holy text of Genesis and blocked the distribution of his translation.

The issue was one of “faithfulness vs. naturalisation.” How does one reconcile differences between two such diverse languages as Korean and English? The authors seem to side with Gale. Readers will have to form their own opinion, but the debate is a crucial one for all translators.

Chapter 4: “A Translation designed to guide,” by Kazue Mino, forms a fitting conclusion, even a climax, to the volume. The author not only contrasts the very different translation styles of two prominent missionaries in Taiwan, but also highlights the critical theological commitments that produced such disparate results.

The two missionaries were Campbell N. Moody (1865–1940) and Thomas Barclay (1849–1935). Moody produced a translation and commentary of Romans 1–8 into romanised Taiwanese, while Barclay translated the Old Testament into Taiwanese and revised previous translations of the New Testament, also using the romanised script developed by missionaries.

In her well-organized chapter, Mino first discusses “the questions faced by missionary writers and translators in the realm of the former Qing Empire . . . and the history of [Taiwanese vernacular] literature in Minnan-speaking regions.” She then examines “how Moody’s attitude towards Taiwanese converts, his missiological standpoint, his approach to biblical texts and the interrelationship among these in [his work on Romans] with particular reference to their contrast with those of the Barclay Version.”

Through a careful analysis of the translations of Moody and Barclay, she demonstrates that the former believed that he should produce a text that could be easily understood when read by Taiwanese people. Accordingly, he added words and phrases that brought out what he thought was the intended meaning of Paul. His approach flowed from his conviction that the Taiwanese were still not ready to read, understand, and interpret the Scriptures without the help of a missionary to guide them. Furthermore, he could produce a slightly “freer” rendition of Romans because he believed that the Scriptures issued from a particular historical and linguistic context and should be made accessible to Taiwanese in their own context.

Additionally, Moody, who was a tireless evangelist as well as a prolific writer in Taiwanese, penned a commentary to his version of Romans that employed a variety of devices to speak to Taiwanese readers in their own terms, using anecdotes and explanations that brought Paul’s message home to them in their context.

Barclay, on the other hand, believed that the Bible was the Word of God in the words of God given to the prophets and the apostles. He did not dare to add or subtract anything from the original text, but strove to produce a literal translation which, though perhaps unclear in places, was accurate enough for Taiwanese to understand by themselves. He did not try to introduce elements of the current context in Taiwan, but rather to give them a Bible that they could interpret and apply themselves, relying on the work of the Holy Spirit.

Without trying to adjudicate which of these approaches was correct, the author does highlight something of crucial importance to Moody: The doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in the saving work of Christ alone on the cross. His experience had convinced him that Taiwanese in general, including Christians, had only very hazy notions of God’s transcendence and of human sin, and therefore of the redemption that Christ had wrought.

Moody emphasized that the missionaries’ understanding of the Bible was the cumulative fruit of centuries of Christian culture, whereas Taiwanese had no such advantages. Consequently, missionaries could, and should, guide the Taiwanese into the understanding of the Bible that they had received from others, including the Church Fathers and the Reformers.

He wanted his readers to see their sins, repent of them, renounce all efforts at self-justification, and turn to Christ in reliance on his atoning sacrifice for deliverance from the guilt and power of indwelling sin. In this way, he sought to develop a “truly Protestant church that is based upon the understanding of salvation, not as an acquired achievement but as ‘un-tian, [grace],’” a gift (95-96).

It would appear to me that Mino appreciates Moody’s sensitive knowledge of Taiwanese culture, and that she thinks that Barclay’s literal translation was too “rigidly literal.” But that is about as far as she goes in revealing her preferences.

In short, this is a study remarkable for its conciseness, scope, careful analysis, and theological and missiological insight. It is the work of a very competent scholar.

Conclusion

This review has been able to touch upon the high points of a very dense volume of carefully argued essays. I hope that readers will take the time to study the entire book carefully.

Missionary Translators will be of great interest to all who seek to communicate Christian truth to speakers of other languages, either in writing or orally. I found it most stimulating and informative, and I strongly recommend it.

[1]. The writer taught Greek, New Testament, and Systematic Theology for China Evangelical Seminary in Taiwan and North America, supervised the translation of Bauer-Gingrich-Danker’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament into Chinese, translated A Critique of Indigenous Theology by Zhang Lisheng (Lit-sen Chang) into English, and preached many sermons in Chinese.