The Nature of Translation

Barnett and Fairbank noted that, no matter how immersed in the Chinese language and writing systems the missionaries were, “in Chinese linguistic waters, they were still land animals. Chinese assistance was essential to their reaching the Chinese audience”.Footnote ¹ Moreover, it was generally acknowledged that eventually Chinese translators would need to replace the missionary in the translation process. As Samuel Kidd noted: “the best translation must after all be one produced by a native: and when we procure a learned and pious Chinese, deeply read in his own language, and well acquainted with the original scriptures, he will doubtless produce a version, before which all our best productions must give way”.Footnote ²

The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe made the significant distinction between Übersetzen,—or transferring the information correctly—and Übertragen—or conveying the message in a way which allows understanding to take place and the idea or concept to enter in to the parlance of the people. Protestant Christians believe the translation of the Bible to be a theological and an almost sacred task. The Protestant Christian paradigm runs thus: ‘as Jesus entered in to the life-experience of humanity by becoming human, so too the Biblical text enters in to the minds and hearts of the recipient readers in their languages and contexts’.

Introduction to the Translation of the Southern Min Version.

The English Presbyterian Mission was established in 1847 and its first missionary, William Chambers Burns, arrived in Fujian in 1851. Missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Church of America (Later the Reformed Church of America) had already arrived in 1842. A common understanding of theology, Church Government and mission strategy created a highly cohesive, British and American, Reformed Church, missionary force. The American missionary John van Nest Talmage wrote in 1877: “though the missions have always been kept distinct, the intimacy has been so great that in many respects they have worked together almost as one mission”.Footnote ³ Agreed policies on the principles of translation soon followed. When difficulties of theological interpretation arose, commentaries by established Reformed Church Theologians were able to provide defining theological interpretations.

The first Protestant missionaries to arrive on Taiwan had in fact been the Dutch, who were present from 1624 to 1662. While they learned the indigenous languages of Taiwan and began the translation of the Bible, they were unable to complete this task before the Dutch colonial powers were forced to leave by the Chinese Ming Dynasty General, Zheng Chenggang (or Koxinga). The Christian movement among the indigenous peoples collapsed without then being granted the opportunity to have and to read the Bible for themselves. William Campbell, who was a missionary with the Presbyterian Church of England two centuries later, did not fail to learn the lesson:

Critical Factors behind the Success of the Southern Min Version

Both missions stressed the importance of high quality, general education and theological education for both the ministry and laity. The pioneer English Presbyterian Missionaries (EPM) in Formosa (Taiwan), were in fact all Scotsmen and graduates of the University of Glasgow, where they received a thorough grounding in Reformed theology and in the original Biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek. This allowed them to engage with very different conceptual worlds within the language and thought forms of the writers and the people for whom the texts were written. In time, this meant a willingness and ability to engage with challenges of the language, idioms and conceptual worlds of the Chinese. This emphasis in turn was encouraged in the emerging Church.

The adoption and acceptance of the use of an easy-to-learn system of Romanisation made the Bible accessible quickly in Taiwan and Fujian, where illiteracy was almost universal at the time. Rather than attempting to teach Chinese characters, the Romanised script could be easily learnt in 3 days to a week. The choice of the Xiamen vernacular as the standard of Southern Min assisted the translators. Unlike, for example, the Shanghai vernacular in which there were major variations in speech, the Xiamen vernacular was readily understood and accepted by speakers of Southern Min in other areas.

Biblical translation must of course, always be accurate, intelligible to the average reader and written in good style. The reader is entitled to know that the translation is as accurate a rendering of the original text as possible. He or she must be able to read and understand the text naturally. The text must read smoothly, in good style and have, as far as possible, the same effect on the reader of the translation as it did on the original first readers. Through the use Romanisation, the Bible was made available to readers of Southern Min in the form of “normal” colloquial speech, rather than in a more literary and difficult form.

Translation was also especially effective in Southern Min because it was undergirded by the production of high-quality language resources such as grammars and dictionaries. In 1873, the English Presbyterian missionary, Carstairs Douglas, produced his monumental work, The Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy [Xiamen]. The volume contained 8,300 entries and 612 pages. Douglas built on the early vocabulary manuscripts of the American missionaries the Reverends J. Lloyd, Emily Doty and Alexander Stronach. The University of Glasgow granted Douglas with an honorary Doctor of Divinity for his work.

W. S. Swanson wrote of Douglas: “he felt he was not sent to anglicise but to Christianise the Chinese, and everything must be so ordered as not to hinder but to further this end”.Footnote ⁵ for Douglas, the dictionary was not only an academically demanding but also an essentially missionary enterprise. Swanson added: “at no time was the missionary lost in the scholar”.Footnote ⁶ 50 years later, another EPM missionary, Thomas Barclay, revised and updated Carstairs work. Barclay relied heavily on a local native speaker as his co-compiler, the Reverend Iu Su-iong.

The Unseen Helper: the Native Speaker and Co-Translator

The term “local assistant” describes those Chinese people who assisted the missionary in their translations and compilations of dictionaries and grammars. The term however was often used to describe any Chinese who assisted the missionaries in their work. We know very little about the early assistants of translation in China.Footnote ^7, Footnote ^8, Footnote ⁹ Janice Wickeri postulates that the first local assistants were the language teachers of the missionaries and scholars who had had little success in pursuing governmental posts through traditional channels.Footnote ¹⁰ Lai suggests that they were “treaty port intellectuals” who were unable to find other work and felt that collaboration with foreigners might create new opportunities. They may have found a way to survive economically by assisting the missionaries. A few even became influential because of their position as missionaries’ assistants.Footnote ¹¹

While their role in providing well written, accurate translations into Chinese was vital, Chinese assistants gained little or no recognition for their work. Sometimes their names are known through correspondence and other sources. More typically however, the famous Methodist missionary Walter Medhurst participated in the translation of the Delegates Version of the bible (1852) with the help of “a native of Nanjing”, whose name we do not know. Hong notes: “since the time when Morrison and Marshman first translated the bible, the role played by missionaries’ Chinese assistants is said to be rather minimal and often anonymous. Their names were seldom mentioned”.Footnote ¹²

Nevertheless, Medhurst claimed that Gützlaff's translation of the bible were defective because Gützlaff had neglected to use Chinese assistants. The two key qualities that the assistants provided were accuracy of expression and good classical style. Medhurst wrote: “it is still, in the opinion of good Chinese scholars very defective, and will continue to be so, as long as he neglects to consult and avail himself of the assistance of learned natives, and does not aim to make his phrases and expressions, in the Chinese sense of the word, correct and classical. Native scholars very much disapprove of his collaction [sic] of words and use of terms”.Footnote ¹³

Zetzsche writes about the role of the Chinese assistant in the most successful bible version of the nineteenth century, the Delegates Version: “Chinese assistants were mostly neglected in public statements about the version, but the good stylistic features of the Delegates Version attest to the significant role they played”.Footnote ¹⁴ John Lai notes the crucial roles that both missionary and local assistant played: “in the process of such Anglo-Chinese cooperation, the missionary usually played a decisive role in the selection and interpretation of texts, the materials to be included or admitted, while the Chinese collaborator was crucial in determining the final outcome, especially the style of the translation”.Footnote ¹⁵

The 1890 Protestant Missionary Conference however did not appoint any Chinese scholars to any of the three translation committees and does not appear to have made any comment about their use. Only missionaries were appointed to the Mandarin Union Version Translation Committee whose work was finally published in 1919. We do not know the names of most of their assistants. The assistant usually only expressed their thoughts to the Committee though their missionary.

Native Assistants and the 1919 Version

The missionaries appointed to translate the Bible in to colloquial Mandarin intended that the Union Version should be simply a temporary version. As Hong notes: “when the CUV was first published in 1919, the missionaries involved in the translation acknowledged that their work should play only a temporary role before another Bible translation, produced by native Chinese speakers, would replace it”.Footnote ¹⁶ One of the translators of the 1919 Mandarin Union Version, Baller, described the vital role that the Chinese assistants played. “No rendering was adopted, in regard to the Chinese of it, without their agreement”.Footnote ¹⁷ In the Preface to the 1907 report on the progress of Mandarin Union Version, the Chinese assistants are said to have provided “whatever excellence” the version offered. The Chinese assistants even received the right to vote in decisions regarding the final text of the Old Testament. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Chinese assistants’ contributions were limited to issues relating to matters of grammar and style within the Chinese language. They remained assistants to the missionaries who were the appointees to the committees.

One of the few known assistants, Wang Yuande described a major dilemma that the Chinese assistant faced by the nature of the relationship that was evolving in the late nineteenth century. Wang was the assistant of C. W. Mateer, the early Chairman of the Mandarin Union Version Committee. In his work, which is one of the few extant writings by an assistant, Wang describes the typical process of translating and the tense atmosphere of discussion, where everyone contributed equally:

This tension and exasperation in the Chinese Union Version Translation Committee was also evident when the Chinese assistants could not agree among themselves.Footnote ¹⁹ Perhaps not only did the Chinese assistants lack theological training and were thereby not able to discern the exact meaning of the original. They may also not have been able to understand each other clearly because they came from different provinces.

Zetzsche makes a significant observation in relation to the movement to equal participation of the Chinese in the production of the Mandarin version. During Chauncey Goodrich's term as Chairman of the Committee Translating the Old Testament, which ended in 1908, the Chinese assistants were given an equal vote with the foreigners. Zetzsche noted:

It may also be that the Chinese assistant was reluctant to draw attention to himself. Arthur Sydenstricker, (1852–1931) who was for a short time on the Mandarin Union Committee, observed that:

The appointment process of European missionaries to that Mandarin Union Version Translation Committee also reinforced the relationship of the assistant to their missionary was that of an employee. In contrast, as we will see, Barclay's co-translators were not his employees, but had been appointed by the Synod of Fujian and were funded by the Bible Society. The fact that they were working with their own vernacular allowed the Southern-Min co-translators much scope for making a contribution. This team approach may have been unique in China in this period.

The process of translation demonstrates the nature of the roles of the assistant and the missionary. The group meeting of missionaries and their assistants was normally only in the morning. Each missionary spent the afternoon with his assistant doing preparatory work for the next day. It may well be that at that point the assistant came into his own, depending on the openness of the relationship with the missionary. The relationship between the chairman of the Mandarin version, the Reverend William Goodrich and his assistant Liu Dacheng appears to have been especially fruitful. Goodrich wrote: “our teachers’ work is invaluable, but it is in working with us, tasting words with us, feeling the quality and sensing ‘the swing of a Chinese sentence’ that their value chiefly appears”.Footnote ²²

Chow Lien HwaFootnote ²³ rightly points out that the helpers in the High Wen-li version were generally scholars and the teachers of the missionaries. The helpers in the Mandarin Committee on the other hand were selected from the congregations and mission schools, on the basis of their knowledge of the vernacular. In contrast, as we will see, the assistants on Barclay's team were theologically trained and educated speakers of the vernacular. Nevertheless, in all cases the missionaries took control of the translation process by retaining the authority to define the theological meaning of the text. As the assistants usually did not know any Greek or Hebrew, and sometimes little or no English, this was perhaps natural and understandable. Four languages were involved: the original Biblical languages of Hebrew and Greek, the Chinese vernacular, and English, the working language of the translation process. The English King James and Revised Standard Versions served as models and English Bible commentaries were the theological resource. In practical terms, this meant that the missionary explained the text to the Chinese assistant who had to grasp its meaning and be able to open up ways to express its meaning in Chinese in ways that met missionary approval.

Further Limitations on the Assistant

Zetzsche shows how the minimal roles given to Morrison and Gützlaff's Chinese assistants had been changing: “an awareness of the growing independence of the church, and, at the same time, a much more realistic understanding of their own limitations in the foreign language, prompted the Mandarin Union Version missionary translators to open up the work for more participation by Chinese translators”.Footnote ²⁴

When Barclay began to revise the Southern Min Bible in 1913, a number of factors in the relationship between the missionary and the assistant were the same as with the Union Version. The missionary had seniority, status and authority. The assistants were no doubt often anxious to remain in good favour with the missionary and not draw attention to literary failings. Kramers notes that there are no identifiable literary allusions to classical Chinese literature in any of the translations of the Bible.Footnote ²⁵ Christian Chinese who had found themselves “liberated” by the gospel would not be likely to want to include obvious references to the sacred texts that they had left behind. Missionaries were also unwillingly to allow any such allusions. Few assistants were likely to emerge as a creative force in the translation process, at least initially.

Moreover, the German missionary A. Nagel for example argued in 1914 that “no small difficulties are encountered in the Chinese language itself, particularly in the grammatical structure, vocabulary, and style of the written language. It is not easy at times to clothe the subject matter of the Bible in the garb of a language so different in composition to the original”Footnote ²⁶ Nagel went on to observe that the primary responsibility for both the accuracy and the style in translation is the missionary-translator's even when they acknowledged that their Chinese assistant is perfectly competent. At times, the Chinese language may seem unable to express a particular conceptual thought, word or phrase adequately. John Gibson of the EPM also reflected this concern about the Chinese language. “Accuracy of thought and precision of language are qualities not fully appreciated by the Chinese”.Footnote ²⁷ The debate in the translation of science textbooks had raised the question of the ability of the Chinese language to carry very specific and defined conceptual detail.

Meanwhile, the missionary scrutinised the translated biblical text for theological correctness. He was the one who understood and interpreted the text and in that sense controlled its translation. The target community must comprehend the ideas in the text precisely as they are understood in the original. Accuracy and faithfulness to the original Greek and Hebrew texts were paramount in the minds of the missionary-translators. Faithfulness to the original text was much more important to them than simply “good style” in the Chinese vernacular. This further limited the role of the assistant.

The Translation of the Southern Min Version: some developments

From 1913 to 1916, Barclay and his team of assistants translated the New Testament. In 1923 they began to translate the Old Testament. Barclay increasingly worked with a group or team of what he termed “co-translators”, who generally out-numbered the missionaries in the team. In a photograph taken of Barclay's team working on the Old Testament translation in Xiamen, there are six local pastors and four missionaries around the table.Footnote ²⁸ The photo contrasts with the group photos of the translation team of the Mandarin Version Committee, where the Chinese assistants are behind their particular missionary.Footnote ²⁹ This “team approach” provided Barclay's co-translators with a basically equal role in the translation process. The Chinese were also willing and able to voice their opinions on important priorities in the translation process: “when Mr Barclay suggested to a Chinese minister that a certain verse in Ephesians might be altered to be a little more readable, he said, ‘no. What we wish is the exact meaning of the original, anything else we can do for ourselves’”.Footnote ³⁰

The Critical Stages of the Development towards the Co-translator

In the early period, from 1847 to around 1880, the missionaries, who had not yet mastered Chinese, were dependent on their assistants for learning the language, for interpreting and for translation. William Burns was the first EPM missionary translator to use assistants in the 1850s and 1860s. Burns acknowledged the importance of the assistant in translating The Pilgrim's Progress. While Burns accepted full responsibility for both the accuracy and the intelligibility of the translation, he could not overlook the fact that good style could only be achieved with the help of a Chinese assistant. “Of course in such work the style depends almost entirely on the Chinese teachers employed; but even though the style is theirs, it is very difficult to be faithful to the original and yet to make a free and engaging native work”.Footnote ³¹

In the beginning, practical issues dominated the relationships. Assistants were expensive and the available assistants may have had no experience in translation. They may have used the experience gained with the foreigner as a stepping stone to more important roles and may not have remained long enough to establish effective working relationships. Nevertheless, the roles of the assistants began to change and develop over this period. Typically, the first assistants became the first preachers and then ministers of the Church.

The second period, from 1880 to around 1913 was characterised by more formal organisation in the emerging Church. It was also a time of slow transition from a subservient role as native assistant to Barclay's concept of a team ministry for translation. By the early twentieth century, the next generation of local Christians had emerged as competent and well-educated scholars with solid theological education. In 1892, John Gibson had actually argued against relying on local assistants.Footnote ³² He argued that the Chinese assistant had usually formed his religious vocabulary from imitating the missionaries, and so his vocabulary was not actually “Chinese” at all. Moreover, the local Christian's perceptions as to what Christian words and teaching actually mean will be naturally formed by “heathen perceptions” which had been held prior to conversion to Christianity. This, Gibson claimed, would almost inevitably lead to distortions of the text. Gibson came to a somewhat surprising conclusion, that missionary translators ought to avoid using Chinese Christian assistants so far as possible in order to engage with the Chinese language without Christian bias. “The only safeguard is one which requires a good deal of self-denial, viz, to learn the language at the outset, as far as possible, from non-Christian teachers and by the use of non-Christian books”.Footnote ³³

Increasingly however over the next decade, the Chinese assistants were allowed to express themselves and reveal their potential. In 1902, the same John Gibson who had uttered the words quoted above in 1892, now stressed the vital importance of having Chinese assistants present when preaching: “the native speaker supporting and enforcing Christian teaching with a wealth of local knowledge and native experience which no missionary can possess, carries more weight with a native audience”.Footnote ³⁴

In the third period which began just prior to the First World War, the local assistant now became the co-translator, at least for Barclay. Barclay was satisfied that the individuals appointed to assist him were capable scholars and translators. This was not universally accepted. The senior EPM missionary P. J. Maclagen wrote about the Old Testament revision: “it may be fairly called his work, though he had helpers in it. To it he gave laborious years. To the task he brought a scholarly mind and an unrivalled knowledge of the vernacular”.Footnote ³⁵ Barclay's revisions are often recorded as his work and scant attention is given to the work of the co-translators. However, the Chinese co-translators indeed played a full part in the production of the revision of the New and Old Testaments. Their roles in the three aspects of the process of translation—analysis of the source text, the transfer into Chinese of the source text content and the revision of the style, idiom and literary expression of the 1884 text of the Chinese text were crucial.

This can be shown by the fact that Barclay's co-translators were appointed by the Chinese Synod of Fujian and paid for by The British and Foreign Bible Society. This in effect means that they were fully recognised by but independent of the EPM. While the funding system remained the same, the lines of authority had changed. Now the Chinese Synod appointed the Chinese translator. In 1889, in a letter to The British and Foreign Bible Society, which was funding the costs of the revision to the Xiamen Version, Barclay mentions that the salary of a “Chinese teacher” would be less than twenty pounds”.Footnote ³⁶

As significantly, by 1923 a well-organised and integrated Church educational system had produced trained Chinese theologians. In 1923, Thomas Barclay published his Supplement to Carstairs Douglas’ Dictionary of the Amoy Vernacular. The full title is The Supplement to the Dictionary of the Vernacular of the Spoken Language of Amoy by Thomas Barclay, with the assistance of the Reverend Mr Iu Sun-iong. Barclay noted that he worked closely on the compilation of the Supplement with “a young Formosan scholar, Mr Iu Sun-iong, whose knowledge of Chinese, Japanese, and English has been very helpful to me, in the way of making additions and eliminating mistakes”.Footnote ³⁷ Barclay arguably felt that a Chinese-English dictionary was best carried out primarily by himself as a native English speaker. The target language in this case was English. It sought to assist English-speaking people studying the Xiamen vernacular. If the dictionary had been English into Chinese, he may well have felt that that was a different matter. Nevertheless, when discussing the compilation of a subsequent edition of the dictionary, Barclay wrote that the members of the committee undertaking the task of review should each have a Chinese scholar “beside him”.Footnote ³⁸ This point and the fact that Iû’s name was in the title of the work, indicates that by the early 1920s Barclay had recognised the importance of a co-compiler who was a scholar and a native-speaker. Barclay was willing to acknowledge the significance of his Chinese colleague in the process of compiling the dictionary.

Iu Sun-iong (Yang Shiyang) (1898–1978) was typical of the emerging, educated Chinese clergy. He had graduated from the Tainan Theological College (where Barclay had been Principal) in 1919 and then continued his studies in Japan. When Barclay accepted the task of compiling the Supplement, he specifically asked that Yang be assigned to help him in Tainan. The Centennial History of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan states that Yang went with Barclay to Shanghai to complete the revisions.Footnote ³⁹ Yang seems to have played a full part in the production of the Supplement. There are no specific records of how Barclay and he worked together, as there are with Barclay's co-translators of the Bible.Footnote ⁴⁰ The rather sober History of the Southern Taiwanese Church describes the compilation of Barclay's Dictionary: “when Reverend Barclay was preparing the Dictionary for printing, he asked a young Taiwanese evangelist to come to Shanghai to help him. Reverend Barclay thought a great deal of him”. (siau-liam i – xiangnian ta)Footnote ⁴¹

In neither of Edward Band's books is Iu's assistance mentioned. Nevertheless, Iu was a highly talented and was theologically trained. He spoke Japanese, which Barclay did not. It is highly likely that Barclay relied heavily on him for an explanation of the meanings of Japanese words which were coming into Southern-Min. Also, where Barclay added characters, it is likely that he relied on Iu to identify the correct or standard character as used in written Southern-Min. Where this was not clear, no character was added. Despite the importance of the role however, the position of assistant to the compiler of a dictionary was not likely to be seen as particularly prestigious. It may be natural that Iu's contribution has slipped out of sight as his career developed. Yang became Professor of Church History at Tainan Theological Seminary and Moderator of The Presbyterian Church of Taiwan. He was a visiting scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary in the United States in 1954 where a scholarship has been established in his honour.

The Process of the Translation of the New Testament

By the time Barclay was asked to head the team to translate the Bible into Southern-Min, theologically trained, Chinese scholars, such as Iu had emerged in Fujian and Taiwan with some knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. In the early twentieth century, the complexity of the process of translation was becoming clearer. By the 1890s, there were over 40 different Chinese versions of the Bible available in China. More and more experience and resources were becoming available, and as a result the methodology of translation was sharpening.

In his references to this new revision of the Bible, Barclay consistently refers to “our” work, indicating his collaboration with the Chinese co-translators. In contrast, The Centennial History of Presbyterian Church written in 1965 did not mention the co-translators at all. Band wrote: “after long delay, the task (of translating the New Testament) was entrusted to Barclay who had the assistance of three Chinese scholars”Footnote ⁴². The Presbyterian Messenger, the EPM Church newspaper called them “co-adjugators”,Footnote ⁴³ Barclay himself wrote however:

In an extant photo of the Barclay and his three co-translators at work, there are other European missionaries present. One of these is very likely to be A. L. Warnhuis, who was secretary of the Revision Committee. The committee appears to have been a consultative body that assisted when needed and available rather than necessarily part of the team. The Europeans were not appointed full-time to the position. Other capable missionary-linguists such as Moody and Campbell clearly added their advice. Barclay was appointed the team leader, which no doubt stemmed from his greater knowledge of the source text in Greek and his prestige as a senior missionary. There was full equality in the team. The lack of knowledge of the source languages was a handicap for full participation by the local co-translators. John Gibson noted in 1912: “considering the extreme pressure which a liberal modern education puts on the permissible limits of time, Chinese students cannot spare from more fruitful studies the time required for the acquisition of Hebrew, Greek and Latin”.Footnote ⁴⁵

What is crucial here however is how they Missionaries and their “co-translators” related together as a team, and what working strategies they adopted. The available description of how they worked together indicates a team approach. Barclay and his co-translators seem to have made joint decisions about the translation, unless there was a theologically fine point in the original Greek that needed to be appreciated and conveyed. There is a telling point in Barclay's Reminiscences in which he describes the use of italics and footnotes in the revision. Barclay wrote: [my italics]

The issue of adding footnotes within the Bible is significant and controversial. The Bible Societies were concerned not to create theological controversy between denominations through the use of prefaces, other explanations, footnotes, alternative readings or interpretations of the text. The Presbyterian Church had a high degree of agreement on the theological interpretation of the text. The Scottish Bible Society was more prepared to accept footnotes and italics in the translated text and first began to do so in 1899, when it printed Griffith John's Easy Wen-li and Mandarin versions. It included introductions, explanatory notes, subject headings and maps. The British and Foreign Bible Society and The American Bible Society were more reluctant on this point but eventually followed suit.Footnote ⁴⁷

Adding footnotes and italics was a joint decision within Barclay's team.Footnote ⁴⁸ The assumption was that the Bible will speak to the Taiwanese, if the content of the Bible was explained and expressed clearly and well. In other words, translation problems did not essentially lie within the recipient language or within the incoming conceptual thought. The challenge was to express the conceptual thought in the most efficient ways for speakers of the recipient language to grasp. Barclay noted in 1917 in Some Thoughts on the Translation of the Vernacular New Testament:

This contrasts with John Wherry's view in 1912. He wrote: “it is the translator's duty, not the reader's, to decide what the original is, and what the original means. It may be permissible occasionally to give alternative readings, but these should be used sparingly, and only where no preference can be discovered”.Footnote ⁵⁰

More generally, in 1917 Barclay noted the role now played by the most able Chinese assistants in determining the interpretation of the text being translated. He contrasts the stumbling rendering that occurs in the public reading of Scripture from the Chinese characters and the 1913 revision of the New Testament in Romanisation: “the other rendering [Romanised translation] is made by two or three of our ablest Chinese scholars, assisted by a foreigner, made from the Greek original compared with the best English and Chinese translations, made in the quiet of the study, slowly, carefully and with frequent revisions. It cannot be doubtful which of the two should be the better version, or which should be employed in public worship”.Footnote ⁵¹

It should be noted that the emphasis that the EPM placed on Romanisation and the use of the vernacular was also a challenge to the local assistants. Educated people who became co-translates may well have been tempted not to respect baihua or the common spoken vernacular, especially when it is written in western letters. However, they could see a new conceptual framework of translation was developing. The Romanised vernacular was a means by which the wide spread expression of thought in natural, spoken ways became possible. The increasingly well-educated, local Taiwanese pastors did not in fact despise the vernacular, but embraced it. Indeed, through it Taiwan Southern-Min developed an expression of identity and pride, which became even more so and all the more effective under Japanese occupation.

Nevertheless, Barclay was the team leader, and necessarily so. He remained in control of the technical aspects of production. He spent May to August 1915 revising the text in Xiamen, and the New Testament was published in July 1916. The Presbyterian Monthly reported: “other workers have been associated with Mr Barclay in this revision, but his scholarly instincts and his knowledge of the vernacular made it extremely important that he should be free to give close attention to it final stages”.Footnote ⁵² The translation certainly enjoyed success. Over fifty thousand copies of the New Testament were produced in the next ten years. 60,000 copies were sold in Fujian Taiwan and Malaya over the first 15 years.Footnote ⁵³ It was republished in 1926 in a large edition. In 1996, it was republished in a character version and remains in use.

The Translation of the Old Testament in to Southern Min

The revision of the Old Testament was yet a further development of the team approach to translation. When in 1925, the British and Foreign Bible Society asked Barclay to translate the Old Testament into the Xiamen Vernacular, the collaborative aspect of the work was again clear. The Tainan Mission Council minutes of December 1926 contains the note:

Significantly, the term “fellow-translators” emerged for the first time. This suggests an ever- increasing equality in the work of translation. And yet in contrast, The British and Foreign Bible Society described Barclay's three co-translators as “collaborators”.Footnote ⁵⁵ The perception which was held in England of the role that the Chinese co-translator played was different from that held in Fujian and Taiwan. The Synod of Fujian assumed authority for the appointment processes of the Chinese co-translators, even if Barclay again supervised the production and printing of the work.

Work began in 1927 with two Taiwanese scholars and on December 30, 1930, the team reported that they had completed the translation. Barclay acknowledged the “collaboration” of his Chinese co-translators as a full partnership. When they completed the Old Testament, he reported:

Due to various disruptions, the text was not finally published and available until 1933. As Barclay's life was drawing to a close in 1934, and as Japanese restrictions on missionaries grew tighter, it must have been clear that his co-translators would increasingly need to accept full responsibility for translation.

As we have noted, this contrasts with some significant perceptions of the relationships between the missionary and assistant in other parts of China. Lai concludes with a no doubt overly unflattering view of the missionary-translator, but most certainly untrue of Barclay: