Bible translations into the languages of China

The bible is 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, spoken mainly in Yunnan and South West China.[1]

Chinese

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 complete New Testament was finished in 1938, and the complete Bible in 1968. 45,000 Lisu Bibles were published in 1995.

Translation John 3:16
Unknown edition

Eastern Lisu

In Eastern Lisu (a separate language) part of the Bible was published for the first time in 1912 and the New Testament was published in 1951.[2] The Old Testament in Eastern Lisu is not yet fully translated.[3]

Lahu

The complete Bible was first published in Lahu in 1989. Amity Press has published at least part of the bible into Lahu.

Translation John 3:16
Thailand Bible Society Awˬ 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.

Wa

The New Testament was translated by Vincent Young and published in 1938 by British and Foreign Bible Society. The entire Bible was completed by Wa Christians in the ninety's, 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 finalized Wa Bible was published in April 2012. Amity Press has published the New Testament into Wa. Available on YouVersion.

Jingpo/Kachin

The Bible was first translated from its original language of Hebrew and Greek into the Jingpo language in 1926 in Burma, by a Swedish Baptist missionary, Ola Hanson. Amity Press has published the Kachin Bible in 1989 and again in 2013.

Translation John 3:16
Myanmar Bible Society 2006 Kaning 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.

Dai

Amity Press has published at least part of the bible into Dai.

Naxi

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 [4]

Miao

Sam Pollard published translations of parts of the Bible [5] into the language of China's Miao, a group of diverse peoples living in China's mountainous southeast and northern Southeast Asia, also called "Flowery Miao" and Hmong. [3][6]

Pollard started on the New Testament in 1906 and published parts of it, but died of typhoid in 1917 before he could finish. Colleagues completed the work. The book was typeset in Japan, and eventually 85,000 copies were distributed. [7] 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. Since Pollard's Miao characters are not 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 new translation was launched at a ceremony in Kunming, September 2009, with an initial printing of 10,000 copies. [8]

See also

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. ↑ Gospel according to St. Mark in Naxi, tr. Samuel Pollard, Elise Schapten (British & Foreign Bible Society, 1932).
  5. ↑ WorldCat Listing Search "Samuel Pollard Hmong"
  6. ↑ 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.
  7. ↑ Yu Suee Yan, "The Story of the Big Flowery Miao Bible," The Bible Translator 62.4 (2011), p. 209.
  8. ↑ Yan, "The Story," pp. 209-212.

Further reading


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