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Source, Survival and Supremacy: Rethinking the Reception of the Chinese Union Version of the Bible in Chinese Protestant Communities
Zhuang, Rouyu
Zhuang, Rouyu
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Abstract
"The Chinese Union Version of the Bible, first published in China in 1919, has occupied a canonical position in the Chinese Bible polysystem throughout the twentieth century. Its continued, persistent popularity simultaneously presents both a good example of a Chinese translation success story, and an interesting and confounding problem for Bible and translation studies. The translation has retained its authoritative position, despite the fact that competing translations derived from more prestigious sources have emerged since the 1970s. This runs counter to the general assumption in Bible translation studies that the respectability of a biblical translation is directly related to the reliability of its source. The article attempts to explain this counterintuitive phenomenon in light of Western descriptive and poststructuralist translation theories concerning the reception of translation in the recipient culture. The author seeks to resolve the contradiction through a descriptive understanding of the relatively insignificant role played by the source text in the reception of the Chinese Union Version. The problem is also examined from a poststructuralist standpoint; the author interprets the supremacy of the Chinese Union Version in relation to the qualities embodied in the translation, which through its mutation and transformation, enables the survival of the original."
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2012
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With permission of the license/copyright holder