A Comparative Study Of The Different Translations Of The Four Gospels In The Late Qing Dynast

The translation of the Bible by Protestant missionaries to China in the 19 th century experienced a very complex process.In general,missionaries have been working hard to produce a translation that follows the original text and is convenient for missionary work.In this process,due to the differences in the concepts and teachings of various missions,missionaries divided and combined on the path of joint scripture translation,trying to find a balance point that can be combined together.Before the final translation of Mandarin and the combined version,hundreds of Chinese versions of the Bible with different literary styles and translation styles were born.Based on previous studies,this article selects four language types of translations as the object of comparative study.The classical Chinese version selects the first fully translated Chinese version of the Bible,Morrison Milne,Wenli Bible(1823),and the deep literary and scientific translation,Wenli Delegates’ Bible(1927)The widely used Guri Karpov’s "Orthodox Wenli NT"(1864)in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom,the Peking Mandarin Bible(1872/1874)jointly translated by five missionaries,the most authoritative Chinese Union Mandarin Bible(1919),and the dialect version of the "New Testament Bible" published in 1897 and jointly translated by missionaries in Shanghai were selected,The most influential shallow literary and scientific translation is Samuel I.J.Schereschewsky,Easy Wenli Bible,1902.The English version is KJV(King James Version of the Bible,1611).This article takes the four Gospels of the New Testament in the Chinese version of the late Qing Bible as the textual analysis object.In terms of literature research,through a word for word comparison of some texts of the Gospel in various Chinese translated Bible documents,starting from the similarities and differences between the texts,and combining the research results of the history of Chinese translation of the Bible,the author combs the inheritance relationship between different versions of the Bible,and concludes that the syntactic structure of the Beijing Mandarin translation is similar to that of the commissioned version.In terms of word order and word usage,the Beijing Mandarin translation is heavily referenced in the Mandarin and combined versions Joseph Sch(?)sser’s shallow literary and scientific translation heavily references the conclusions of the commissioned translation in terms of word usage and word order,providing a documentary basis for the study of the translation history of the Bible.In terms of language research,this article attempts to sort out the features of Chinese vocabulary reflected in the late Qing missionaries’ Chinese translation of the Bible.From the perspective of Shanghai dialect research,this paper examines and interprets the distinctive words of the dialect,horizontally compares the differences between the northern and southern dialects of the same period,and vertically analyzes the retention and changes of Shanghai dialect over the past century.From the perspective of the study of the evolution of Chinese vocabulary,this paper compares and studies the linguistic differences,causes,and interrelationships between different versions of the Bible based on the large number of synonym substitutions generated by different translations of the same text;Starting from the clustering of synonymous words derived from the inheritance and translation of various versions of the Bible,this paper explores the semantic relationships and historical evolution reflected therein,attempts to summarize the basic features of the lexical system from the 19 th century to the early 20 th century,and explores the role of missionary translation in promoting the development of vernacular Chinese and the establishment of modern Chinese.