Bible translations into the languages of China

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The Bible has been translated into many of the languages of China besides Chinese. These include major minority languages with their own literary history, including Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian and Uyghur. The other languages of China are mainly tribal languages, mainly spoken in Yunnan in Southwest China. [1]

Contents

Chinese

Jingpho/Kachin

The Bible was first translated into the Kachin language in Burma in 1927, by a Swedish Baptist missionary, Ola Hanson. Amity Press published the Jingpho Bible in 1989 and again in 2013.

Translation John 3:16
Myanmar Bible Society 2006Kaning rai nme law, Karai Kasang a Kasha hpe kam sham ai ni nlang hte gaw, hten bya n hkrum ai sha, htani htana asak lu la mu ga nga, Karai Kasang gaw shi a Kasha shingtai hpe jaw kau ai kaw du hkra, mungkan ga hpe tsaw ra wu ai.

Lahu

The complete Bible was first published in Lahu in 1989.

Translation John 3:16
Thailand Bible SocietyAwˬ lawn kʼo, Gʼuiˬsha miˬguiˬ yaˇ hta‸ ha‸ jaˇ ve pa taw, yawˇ ve Yaˇ hpu tiˍ piˇ laˇ ve yoˬ. Hkʼe te leh, Yaˇ hpu hta‸ hkʼa yonˍ ve chaw hkʼa peu-eˬ maˇ gʼa luˬ maˇ gʼa sheˆ ve awˬ hkʼoˆ ka‸, co ti‸ ha ti‸ hta‸ gʼa ve yoˬ.

Lisu

Lisu is part of the Tibeto-Burman family. Samuel Pollard and James O. Fraser prepared simple Christian literature while they were in the first stages of learning the Miao and Lisu languages, later moving on to translating the New Testament.

In the Central Lisu dialect, Fraser, after creating the Fraser alphabet, first worked on Mark and John. He then handed on the translation task to Allyn Cooke and his wife, Leila, coming back to help the team with revision in the mid 1930s. Isobel Miller Kuhn also worked on the translation. The New Testament was finished in 1938, and the complete Bible in 1968.

Translation John 3:16
Unknown edition LisuJohn316.png

Eastern Lisu/Lipo

The New Testament in Eastern Lisu, translated by George E. Metcalf, was first published in 1951 in Hong Kong, however no copies ever got back to Yunnan. [2] The Old Testament in Eastern Lisu is not yet fully translated. [3]

Miao

Sam Pollard began work translating the New Testament into the Large Flowery Miao language of northeastern Yunnan in 1906, [3] [4] publishing parts of it, [5] however died of typhoid in 1917 before he could finish it. Colleagues completed the work. The book was typeset in Japan, and eventually 85,000 copies were distributed. [6]

In the late 1980s, Miao Christian leaders decided to finish Pollard's work and translate the Old Testament. After discussion with the Yunnan Christian Council and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, semi-official organizations, a translation team was formed in Kunming. One question was whether to continue to use the Pollard script, which was familiar to Christians from their reading of older materials, or to use the new script promulgated by the government in 1956. In the end, a modified version of the old script was used. When Pollard's Miao characters were not yet included in Unicode, standard computer word processing programs could not handle the text. Consultants from among the missionaries created keyboard shortcuts, but their unique characters could not be copied or the text checked. The Pollard script has since been added to Unicode released in version 6.1. The new translation was launched at a ceremony in Kunming in September 2009, with an initial printing of 10,000 copies. [7]

Naxi

The Gospel of Mark was translated into Naxi, spoken in Yunnan, by Elise Schapten using the Pollard script and published by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1932. [8]

Wa

The New Testament in Wa was translated by Vincent Young and published in 1938 by the British and Foreign Bible Society. The entire Bible was completed by Wa Christians in the nineties, and a trial version was published. Since the trial version, the Bible Society of Myanmar has been worked on a thorough revision of the text, and a finalized Wa Bible was published in April 2012. Amity Press has published the New Testament in Wa, available on YouVersion.

Xishuangbanna Dai

The Bible was first translated into Xishuangbanna Dai in 1933.

Yi

Amity Press has published the New Testament in Yi.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yunnan</span> Province in Southwest China

Yunnan, is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately 394,000 km2 (152,000 sq mi) and has a population of 48.3 million. The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan, autonomous regions of Guangxi, and Tibet as well as Southeast Asian countries: Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar. Yunnan is China's fourth least developed province based on disposable income per capita in 2014.

The Lisu people are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group who inhabit mountainous regions of Myanmar (Burma), southwest China, Thailand, and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lijiang</span> Prefecture-level city in Yunnan, Peoples Republic of China

Lijiang, also known as Likiang, is a prefecture-level city in the northwest of Yunnan Province, China. It has an area of 21,219 square kilometres (8,193 sq mi) and had a population of 1,253,878 at the 2020 census whom 288,787 lived in the built-up area (metro) made of Gucheng District. Lijiang is famous for its UNESCO Heritage Site, the Old Town of Lijiang, which contains a mixture of different historical architecture styles and a complex, ancient water-supply system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fraser script</span> Alphabetic writing system

The Fraser or Old Lisu script is an artificial abugida invented around 1915 by Sara Ba Thaw, a Karen preacher from Myanmar and improved by the missionary James O. Fraser, to write the Lisu language. It is a single-case (unicameral) alphabet. It was also used for the Naxi language, e.g. the 1932 Naxi Gospel of Mark and used in the Zaiwa or Atsi language e.g. the 1938 Atsi Gospel of Mark.

James Outram Fraser was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. He pioneered work among the Lisu people, of Southwestern China, in the early part of the 20th century. He is credited with developing the Fraser script for their language.

Lisu is a tonal Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Yunnan, Northern Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand and a small part of India. Along with Lipo, it is one of two languages of the Lisu people. Lisu has many dialects that originate from the country in which they live. Hua Lisu, Pai Lisu and Lu Shi Lisu dialects are spoken in China. Although they are mutually intelligible, some have many more loan words from other languages than others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisu Christianity</span>

Lisu Church is a Christian church of an ethnic minority of southern China, Myanmar, Thailand and a part of India. The Chinese government's State Administration for Religious Affairs has proposed considering Christianity the official religion of the Lisu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sam Pollard (missionary)</span>

Samuel Pollard, known in Chinese as Bo Geli was a British Methodist missionary to China with the China Inland Mission who converted many of the A-Hmao in Guizhou to Christianity, and who created a Miao script that is still in use today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pollard script</span> Abugida used in China

The Pollard script, also known as Pollard Miao or Miao, is an abugida loosely based on the Latin alphabet and invented by Methodist missionary Sam Pollard. Pollard invented the script for use with A-Hmao, one of several Miao languages spoken in southeast Asia. The script underwent a series of revisions until 1936, when a translation of the New Testament was published using it.

Naxi, also known as Nakhi, Nasi, Lomi, Moso, Mo-su, is a Sino-Tibetan language or group of languages spoken by some 310,000 people, most of whom live in or around Lijiang City Yulong Naxi Autonomous County of the province of Yunnan, China. Nakhi is also the ethnic group that speaks it, although in detail, officially defined ethnicity and linguistic reality do not coincide neatly: there are speakers of Naxi who are not registered as "Naxi" and citizens who are officially "Naxi" but do not speak it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chuxiong City</span> County-level city in Yunnan, Peoples Republic of China

Chuxiong City is a county-level city and the capital of the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, in Central Yunnan Province, China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bible translations into Chinese</span>

Bible translations into Chinese include translations of the whole or parts of the Bible into any of the levels and varieties of the Chinese language. The first translations may have been made as early as the 7th century AD, but the first printed translations appeared only in the nineteenth century. Progress on a modern translation was encumbered by denominational rivalries, theological clashes, linguistic disputes, and practical challenges at least until the publication of the Protestant Chinese Union Version in 1919, which became the basis of standard versions in use today.

George Edgar ‘Eddie’ Metcalf, Chinese name 王懷仁 Wáng Huáirén, was a British Protestant missionary serving in China with the China Inland Mission and credited with the first translation of the New Testament for the Eastern Lisu/Lipo minority.

Gladstone Charles Fletcher Porteous, Chinese name 張爾昌 Zhāng Ěrchāng (1874–1944), was an Australian missionary to China who served with the China Inland Mission from 1904 and became Superintendent of the work in East Yunnan. He was a skilled Bible translator, devised the romanized Yi alphabet, and translated parts of the New Testament into several Chinese dialects.

Wa (Va) is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Wa people of Myanmar and China. There are three distinct varieties, sometimes considered separate languages; their names in Ethnologue are Parauk, the majority and standard form; Vo and Awa, though all may be called Wa, Awa, Va, Vo. David Bradley (1994) estimates there are total of 820,000 Wa speakers.

The earliest known Christian texts in Old Uyghur are known from manuscript fragments uncovered in the Turfan oasis. There are approximately fifty fragments written in Old Uyghur. An early Uyghur translation of the New Testament and the Psalms may have been done in the 14th century by Giovanni da Montecorvino, papal envoy to the Mongols who became Roman Catholic archbishop of Khanbaliq in 1307.

The A-Hmao language, also known as Large Flowery Miao or Northeast Yunnan Miao, is a Hmongic language spoken in China. It is the language the Pollard script was designed for, and displays extensive tone sandhi. There is a high degree of literacy in Pollard among the older generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yunnan Ethnic Village</span>

The Yunnan Ethnic Village is an ethnographic village and theme park that displays the various folklore, culture, and architecture of 26 ethnic groups in Yunnan Province, China. The park's major goal is mainly to display some aspects of Yunnan's ethnicity, cultural diversity, and heritage. Located in the southwest suburbs of Kunming next to Dianchi lake, Yunnan Ethnic Village covers an area of 89 hectares including 31 hectares of water. It is classified as a AAAA-class tourist attraction.

References

  1. Principles of Chinese Bible translation: as expressed in five ... Thor Strandenaes - 1987 "In Chinese Bible translating this foreign dominance is evident during the 19th Century and continued well after the ... 17 For the translation into the Han Chinese dialects and the tribal languages of China, see Broomhall 1934. 98-133."
  2. For background, see Tian, Rukang. Peaks of Faith: Protestant Mission in Revolutionary China . Leiden, The Netherlands; New York: E.J. Brill, 1993 pp. 45-46.
  3. 1 2 Covell, Ralph R. "Christian Communities and China's Ethnic Minorities." In R.G. Tiedemann, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China Volume Two 1800-Present (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 726.
  4. Diamond, Norma. “Christianity and the Hua Miao: Writing and Power,” in Daniel H. Bays, ed Christianity in China from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 138-157.
  5. WorldCat Listing Search "Samuel Pollard Hmong"
  6. Yu Suee Yan, "The Story of the Big Flowery Miao Bible," The Bible Translator 62.4 (2011), p. 209.
  7. Yan, "The Story," pp. 209-212.
  8. Gospel according to St. Mark in Naxi, tr. Samuel Pollard, Elise Schapten (British & Foreign Bible Society, 1932).

Further reading