PROF Timothy Barrett tb2@soas.ac.uk
Research Professor
Hellenic Shadows on the China Coast: Greek Terms for "Foreigner” and “Religion” in Early Anglophone Missionary Sinology
Barrett, T.H.
Authors
Abstract
The arrival of educated Protestant diplomats and missionaries in China in the early nineteenth century did not only bring new modern languages into contact with Chinese. The mistranslation 'Barbarian Eye' may reflect a knowledge of a similar term in the Ancient Greek of Aristophanes, while the Bible was translated not from Latin or English but from the original languages, including New Testament Greek. The English word 'religion' in the Authorized Version New Testament was therefore translated variously into Chinese by successive English speakers from Robert Morrison onward not in its modern English meaning, but in the meaning of the underlying Greek. But such difficult choices concerning key words in religious discourse were not being made for the first time: translators from Prakrit to Greek and from Prakrit to Chinese had long before confronted similar issues. Nor were they made in isolation from other translation challenges, such as deciding on the rendering of the word 'superstition'.
Citation
Barrett, T. (2017). Hellenic Shadows on the China Coast: Greek Terms for "Foreigner” and “Religion” in Early Anglophone Missionary Sinology. 翻譯學報 = Journal of translation studies = Fan yi xue bao, NS: 1(1), 59-84
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Oct 6, 2016 |
Publication Date | Jan 1, 2017 |
Deposit Date | Mar 23, 2025 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 23, 2025 |
Print ISSN | 1027-7978 |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | NS: 1 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 59-84 |
Keywords | Barbarian Eye'; Bible translation; Greek to Chinese translation; religion |
Publisher URL | https://cup.cuhk.edu.hk/chinesepress/journal/JTS2017_1/JTS1_59-84.pdf |
Files
JTS1_59-84.pdf
(262 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
© Department of Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2017
You might also like
Literati Encomia on Embroidered Buddhist Icons, c.700-900 CE
(2023)
Journal Article
A Revolutionary Afterlife: The Construction of a History of Chinese Atheism
(2022)
Book Chapter
The Flowering of British Sinology
(2022)
Journal Article
From Religious Ideology to Political Expediency in Early Printing: An Aspect of Buddho-Daoist Rivalry
(2012)
Preprint / Working Paper
The Woman Who Discovered Printing
(2008)
Book
Downloadable Citations
About SOAS Research Online
Administrator e-mail: outputs@soas.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2025
Advanced Search