Translating the ancestors: S. I. J. Schereschewsky's 1875 Chinese version of Genesis

Abstract

Partial and complete Bible translations into classical Chinese existed well before Protestant missionaries actually began to work actively among the Chinese. Translation work accelerated once missionaries gained a foothold in the newly opened treaty ports after 1842, and the entire Bible or portions of it were translated into Fuzhou, Amoy, Canton, Hakka, Suzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai dialects. S. I. J. Schereschewsky's (1831–1906) translation of the Old Testament (OT) into the northern vernacular in 1875 opened a new chapter. His translation was accessible to larger numbers of people and, in contrast to the OT in classical Chinese, was readily understood when read to the illiterate. Moreover, unlike previous translations, it was prepared entirely from the Hebrew original.The purpose of this essay is to examine some of Schereschewsky's views on translating and several of the techniques which he employed in rendering into Chinese the Book of Genesis. My basic assumption is that translation is an interpretative activity. When a text is transposed from one language into another, changes are introduced that are consonant with the receiving languages and culture. Translation is affected by interpretations from within the receptor tradition which, in turn, makes possible the acceptance of the translation and the ideas which it contains. Thus the Old (as well as the New) Testament translations represented one of the initial steps in the signification of Protestant Christianity.