Digitization of Bibles in Greater China (1661–1960)

Digitization of Bibles in Han dialects/fangyan and indigenous languages in China (1661–1960s)

This digitization project, which began in 2018 and will finish by 2022, aims at providing full-text digitization of all major Bible translations in the indigenous languages and the Han dialects (or, “fangyan” in Chinese, meaning “topolect”) published prior to the 1960s in Greater China, comprising about sixty Bible translations in fifty languages (including dialects). Of the indigenous languages, the following translations are included (twenty-nine translations in total; * indicates projects digitized by BFBS):

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Title pages of selected Bibles in the indigenous languages of North and Northwest China and Southwest China

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Title pages of selected Bibles in the aboriginal languages of Taiwan

The orthographies of the translations included in this digitization vary. Many indigenous translations (such as those in the north) have their own native orthographies that have been used for centuries, but a few were developed more recently by Western missionaries (such as the Pollard script for Miao, Yi, and East Lisu). Certain phonetic systems, such as those using Latin script (e.g., Wa, Zaiwa) and zhuyin, are also used. Zhuyin (meaning, “notating sound” or “phonetic notation”) or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, commonly known as “Bopomofo” ⁴ (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ), was the most widely used Chinese transliteration system before the introduction of the modern “Hanyu pinyin” (meaning, “Chinese pronunciation”) system in Mainland China (1958), and is still in use (with some variation) in Taiwan. In the early history of aboriginal Bible translations in Taiwan, translators were forced to use zhuyin symbols. As a reaction against this enforcement, nowadays translators of the aboriginal languages prefer to use Latin script instead. The BFBS Bible Archive, now housed at the Cambridge University Library, is the major repository for most of the Bibles in this collection. The project also owes much to the organization Faith-Hope-Love in Taiwan, which provided high-quality images for almost all aboriginal language translations in Taiwan prior to 1960. Local libraries from China, such as Guangdong Provincial Zhongshan Library, also benefited the project.

Apart from a few translations published during the mid to late nineteenth century, most of the indigenous language translations were published in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Many translations are still recognized by the local speakers and have had immense influence on the religious language (such as in local hymns) of the community. A number of these languages (such as Big Flowery Miao, East Lisu, Yi, and Wa) have published more up-to-date translations in recent decades. Unfortunately, the digitized texts of these languages were not available when their retranslation work was in progress.

This digitization project includes the oldest extant translation of the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of John in Greater China, into an extinct language known as Sinkang (or, “Sinckan” as spelled in the translation) of the Siriya people in Taiwan (known as Formosa at that time) by the Dutch missionary, the Rev. Daniel Gravius (1616–1681). Gravius came to Taiwan in 1647 and resided in Soulang, now the Tainan area. In 1651, he left for Batavia (now Jakarta) and stayed there for three years before returning to the Netherlands. It was commonly believed that during his short stay in the Tainan area he started working on the translation, but the translation was published in the Netherlands in 1661. It was a diglot edition of the Sinkang language and the first official Dutch translation, the Statenbijbel (1637). The images shown here (Figures 3 and 4) are provided by the Royal Danish Library in Denmark from the original publication. In the preface of the translation, Gravius expressed his intention that this translation should help the Siriya people to understand the Bible and the Christian faith. Ironically, in that same year, the Chinese general Zheng Chenggong of the Ming Dynasty fled to Formosa because of his failure to repel the invasion of the Manchus; in Formosa, he attacked and destroyed the Dutch settlement.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

Title page of Gravius’s translation, and the title page of the Gospel of John

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

The first pages of Gravius’s Gospels of Matthew and John

History seems to suggest that China has never been favourable to foreign missionary work. When the first Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison, came to China in 1807, his activities were confined to Guangzhou (or Canton) and Macao. By the time he finished the translation of the Bible, he had to publish it in Malacca (1823), which was under British rule. Likewise, the first Chinese Bible, predating Morrison’s translation by one year (1822), was published not on Chinese soil but in India, by Johannes Lassar and Joshua Marshman. For many years, the “closed country” policy confined Westerners to “Macao and the 13 Factories of Canton” (13 Factories is a district in Guangzhou where trading was most active). After the First Opium War (1842), the Qing Government was forced to open five major ports: Canton, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo, and Shanghai, which are also areas where many dialects are spoken.

Basically, all the early Bible translation work in Han dialects was in these areas (Figure 5), twenty-four translations in total:

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 5.

Centres of the early Bible translation work in Han dialects

Several dialects had their translations published both in Latin and in Chinese scripts (see Figure 6). The Han Chinese characters, being ideograms, may be pronounced according to the dialect pronunciation of the speakers. Other phonetic scripts were also used, such as zhuyin and another phonetic system called the Wangzhou transcription system for Mandarin Chinese (see Figure 7). It remains an open question whether the texts (e.g., Zhili, Jiaodong, and Northern Colloquial) written in Wangzhou transcription can be digitized successfully, because the characters are not Unicode compliant.

Bible translation work in the Han dialects is the most neglected area in the study of the history of Bible translations in China. Because these language forms are often subsumed under Chinese proper, many people (even scholars) would consider that these dialects had no written record, even though some dialects have a translation of the full Bible. One unique feature of this category of Bible translations in China was the involvement of female translators in a number of dialects, such as Sankiang, Jianning, Dingzhou, Hainan, and Cantonese. As in many parts of the world, early missionary work in China was predominantly done by males. Many women missionaries, however capable they were in the Chinese language, were excluded from being involved in Bible translation work in Chinese. The restrictiveness of this situation, however, not only allowed them to be gospel ambassadors to the dialect areas but at the same time gave them an opportunity to translate God’s word into the heart languages of the local people. At a time when literacy (defined as knowledge of Chinese proper) was extremely low in the country, dialect Bibles were the only means through which the local people might read God’s word in their mother tongue. As a result of the national literacy campaign begun in the late 1950s, and the growing popularity of the Chinese Union Version (1919), dialect Bibles fell into disuse and were forgotten in Mainland China, ⁵ but in Taiwan, the Bible Society is still very vigorous in providing the Bible in dialect forms, such as Hakka (2012) and Taiwanese (2021).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 6.

Title pages of selected Bibles in Han dialect Bibles

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 7.

Luke 1 in Zhili (1925) in Wangzhou Mandarin transcription

Digitization of old Chinese Bibles

This digitization project, which began in 2016 and was completed in 2020, aimed at providing full-text digitization of all Bible translations in Chinese (Classical and modern) published prior to the 1960s in Greater China, and includes fifty-one translations (see Figure 8). Those included are (Protestant unless otherwise indicated):

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 8.

Title pages of selected Bibles in Chinese

Short selections

Xu Dishan, Song of Songs (1921; 許地山雅歌新譯)

Lee Rongfang, Lamentation (1931; 李榮芳哀謌)

John L. Nevius, Mark & Acts (1866–1868; 倪維思《馬可福音》《 使徒行傳》)

F. W. Baller, Psalms (1908; 鮑康寧《詩篇精意》)

Chen Mengjia, Song of Songs (1932; 陳夢家《歌中之歌》)

Calvin Lee, A New Translation of the Epistle of James (1928; 李啟榮《新譯雅各書》)

Yan Fu, Mark (1–4) (馬可福音一到四章; 嚴復《馬可福音》)

William C. Burns, Psalms (1870; 賓為霖《舊約詩篇官話》)

In addition to what has been reported earlier on this project (Wong 2017), what follows serves as an update to the work. The project has made a special effort to include all the translations (including selections) of both the Russian Orthodox Church (three in total) and the Roman Catholic Church (fourteen in total). In addition to the collection from the BFBS Bible archive, the project has benefited immensely from the collection at the Holy Spirit Seminary College of Theology and Philosophy in Hong Kong. The notable Zikawei library in Shanghai has made available two unpublished translations by local Jesuit priests which are rarely mentioned in any scholarly discussion: Wang Duomo (1875; Figure 9) and Xu Bin (1884; Figure 10). This project also includes a number of literary translations of single books, including Lamentations (Li Rongfeng, 1931), Song of Songs (Xu Dishan, 1921, and Chen Mongjia, 1932), and selected Psalms (F. W. Baller, 1908). The project has included all the known Bible translations in Chinese, with the only exception being the New Testament translated by Absalom Sydenstricker (1929). A search for the publication or its image is still in progress. By the time this article is published, all these Bibles (including the nineteen texts funded by HKBS) should be available via YouVersion and UBS applications. ⁶

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 9.

Gospel of Matthew by Wang Duomo (1875)

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 10.

Gospel of Matthew by Xu Bin (1884)

Today, the politically charged expression “Sinicization of Christianity” ⁷ often causes unease. Leaving aside its profoundly political implication (such as the re-education and remoulding campaign under the umbrella of Chinese socialism), Sinicization refers to indigenization in China, to which Western missionaries contributed in previous centuries. Given the centrality of the Bible in the Christian faith, Bible translation in China is the most important realization of Sinicization for Christianity. Perhaps this is the reason, in the effort to re-Sinicize Christianity in the modern political context, that retranslation of the Bible is also on the political agenda.

In addition to the preservation of the Bible heritage in China, these two digitization projects are witness to the inculturation efforts and negotiations between Western Christianity and the different ethnic and language groups in China. Lying dormant and hidden in these Bibles for more than three and a half centuries is “a great deal of cultural heritage and Godly wisdom, and for the first time ever, people will be able to gain unprecedented access to them.” ⁸ In the service of the scholarship of Bible translation, researchers can now readily engage in the study of the relationships among different translations, such as how Morrison-Milne (1823) made use of the first Catholic translation (incomplete) by Basset-Su (1707), or to what extent the Peking Mandarin Version (1872) exerted influence on the Chinese Union Version (1919). Equally important is the new availability of these early translations as translation resources (for reference or even as a base) for new translation projects in their respective languages. Indeed, if the digital form of the East Lisu New Testament published in 1951 had been available, the translation work of more than a decade on the East Lisu Bible (2009) would have been considerably shortened. The same can be said of the Hakka (2012) and Taiwanese (2021) Bibles. Even more, for any translation project in Mandarin Chinese (especially those which are currently ongoing), to ignore these invaluable resources would be to disregard God’s blessing to the Chinese-speaking churches through this rich heritage.

By the time the digitization of Bibles in Han fangyan/dialects and indigenous languages is completed, the Chinese-speaking world will be celebrating the bicentennial of the first published Bible in Chinese (albeit not on Chinese soil) by Johannes Lassar and Joshua Marshman (1822). Let it be remembered that the Bible heritage in China is older than 200 years—considerably older than the first published Bible in Han Chinese!