Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies,No.4 July 2002,pp.331-400 College of Humanities and Social Sciences National Dong Hwa University Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies.No.4 including the Amoy dialect and the liturgical register in the lexicon are decreasing. This implies that the religious impact from the Prebysterian The Lexical Influence of the Bible Translation on Church on language in Taiwan is rather little. This also implies that Taiwanese Novel Writing, 1916-1998: Taiwanese identity of the language and culture has been emerging by A Computer-Assisted Corpus Analysis making distinction from the Amoy in China. Chin-an Li* Keywords: church register, Taiwanese novel, corpus analysis, Taiwanese Romanization, Bible translation Abstract In 1916, Rev. Thomas Barclay (1874-1935) published the New Testament Taiwanese Romanization (Peh-oe-ji) and then the Old Testament in 1933. This version of the Bible has been used in Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Taiwan as well as overseas. The so-called "Taiwanese Han-ji edition" of the Bible was published late to 1996 with replacement of the Romanization only. The lexis and syntax remain the same. Many lexical items in the Bible translation are the Amoy dialect or liturgical register which are not familiar to the present-day Taiwanese. Using computer-aided segmentation supplemented by manual segmentation, I found 112,964 word tokens with 12,941 word types in this corpus. I also collected a second corpus with 92,539 word tokens and 12,969 word types consisting of the short stories of Tan5 Lui5 and Tan5 Beng5-jin5 written in the 1990's. Comparing these two corpora, I found that the lexical influence of the Bible translation on Taiwanese novel writing is reducing. The loanwords of the non-local lexical layer * Taiwanese Preceptor, Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations, Harvard University. 331 332 The Lexical Influence of the Bible Translation on Taiwanese Novel Writing, 1916-1998: A Computer-Assisted Corpus Analysis Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies.No.4 stimulated by the translation of Scripture into Chinese." In spite of the The Lexical Influence of the Bible Translation on distinction of the Biblical Hebrew and Chinese in terms of lexical devices, Taiwanese Novel Writing, 1916-1998: e.g., lexical items for expressing verbal moods, rhetorical questions, some A Computer-Assisted Corpus Analysis verbal forms of "to be," pronouns, and proper names, Yariv-Laor concluded that meanings inherent in the original Bible version have also 1 Bible Translation as a Factor in Lexical and Cultural Change been conveyed in the two Chinese Bible translations through rendering the Bible translation produces a kind of artificial contact between two meaning mainly by devices of a lexical nature sharing typological affinity languages which may differ from each other in many respects. It also in the Chinese and Hebrew. With respect to the culture and thoughts in inevitably creates a confrontation between two different cultures and the Bible, "the story contains a didactic message and this message which thoughts because "your thoughts are compelled to leave the tracks made fully complies with Confucian values seems to satisfy the expectations of familiar to you by your own language." (Karlgren 1949, cited by the Chinese reader." (Yariv-Laor 1999:120) Yariv-Laor). Many concepts which are related to Christianity or thoughts After the May Fourth colloquial literature movement in 1919, many belonging to the foreign countries of the source languages might become writers in China viewed China as being in a state of moral crisis, and chose neologisms through loan translation or semantic loans. Those neologisms to hold up the Bible translation as a mirror reflecting the evil human carrying biblical concepts will add to the speakers of the target language behaviors. The Bible translation "found its way into an impressive from the source language and evoke lexical change and cultural change variety of stories by many of China's most famous writer3 of the era," the according to their acceptability and adaptability in the target language. pre-1949 Republican Period (Robinson 1999:275). The translation Yariv-Laor (1999:102) investigated the first chapter of the Book of greatly influenced their works of fiction which employed biblical themes Ruth of the Old Testament of the Mandarin Bible1 translated by Samuel for allegorical purposes both political and spiritual. The writers Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (施約瑟) from Hebrew, and the Mandarin approached the religious material from the viewpoint of humanists Union Version2, which was published in 1919 and used in government concerned with the fate of China (Robinson 1999). schools as part of a standardized national language curriculum. He found Taiwanese novel writings also show the influence of the Bible that "many observations concerning the nature of the language were in fact translation, whereas the degree varies in the different eras. In the 1920s, our data show a salient impact, but the impact is not that great in the 90's. 1 The Mandarin Bible was completed in 1874, and was the Bible used in the greater part of China for many years. 3 Those writers of two groups: the romantics Chuangzhaoshe 'Creation Society' (e.g., Yu 2 The basis of the Union Version was established by the 1890 missionary conference at Dafu, Guo Moruo), and the realists Wenxue Yanjiushe 'Literary Research Society' (e.g., Shanghai (Yariv-Laor 1999:102) Xu Dishan, Mao Dun, Lu Xun, Hu Yepin, Xiao Qian and Ba Jin). 333 334 The Lexical Influence of the Bible Translation on Taiwanese Novel Writing, 1916-1998: A Computer-Assisted Corpus Analysis Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies.No.4 Huang 1986:47). 2 Bible Translation in Taiwan The Taiwan Presbyterian Church, hereafter TPC or Church, has been The first version of the Bible translation appeared in Taiwan is the using this Barclay's version of Bible translation for over thirty years6. Austronesian one4, the Sinkang version. The first publication of the According to Lin C. (1999:51), even though these versions of the Sinkang Bible in Romanization including St. Matthew's and St. John's Bible were in Amoy and not Taiwanese, the missionaries had translated it Gospels, was in 1661; it was translated by Daniel Gravius (倪但理) of the specifically for the Taiwanese people, not the Amoy-speaking people in Dutch reformed Church (North 1938:133). Although the missionaries China. There is a separate Bible translation history for the people in had finished translating the other books of the Bible into the Sinkang Fujian. In Nida's Book of a Thousand Tongues, translations for Fujian language in Romanization, Koxinga drove out the Dutch while the people are classified as a dialect of Chinese while Taiwanese is listed as a translated works were at the printing press, and those except St. Matthew's language of its own ("Taiwanese"), and is not considered a Chinese dialect. and St. John's Gospels were never published (Lin C. 1999:50). An authentic Taiwanese version of the Bible's translation did not In 1852, a Dutch Reformed missionary, Elihu Doty, translated the appear until 1972. In 1966, two Taiwanese Christians, Ko Gospel of John into Romanized Amoy. In 1884, under James Laidlaw Chek-hoan7 (高積煥) and Tan5 Pang-tin3 (陳邦鎮) began to translate the Maxwell's (馬雅各) supervision, the British and Foreign Bible Society Bible into Taiwanese with the combined help of the Catholic Church and published the completed translation of the Bible in the Amoy language (Lai the Protestant Church in Taiwan. This translation is called the Ko-Tan5 1990; Lin C.1999). colloquial Taiwanese version (the K.T.V. version) or the Kerymatic[sic.]7 Not satisfied with the contemporary Amoy translation of the Bible and Taiwanese version8. The publisher, Maryknoll Language School, claimed mindful of the need of the Taiwanese followers, Rev. Thomas Barclay (巴 that it was a Bible version which used Taiwanese to evangelize the good 克禮) undertook a revision of the New Testament in Romanized Amoy news (Eng7 Tai5-gi2 thoan5-pou3 ho2-siau-sit e5 Seng3-keng ek8-pun3). using the Greek version of 1915 as reference. This new version was The preface of this version of the Bible translation states that the published in 1916. pronunciation of the translation of the K.T.V.version was rendered in the In 1930, Barclay finished translating and revising the Old Testament Chiang-chiu rather than the Choan5-chiu dialect. "This was judged to be based on the Hebrew version, and published it in 19355 (Lin C. 1999:55; 6 An equivalent Chinese character edition of this Bible was published in 1996. 7 The Greek word Kerygma means to proclaim. In the primitive Church it meant the 4 It is under the name Formosan in "The Book of a Thousand Tongues," both in the 1938 proclamation of the Gospel as the good news of salvation (in the preface of the K.T.V and 1972 versions. Sin-Iok 1972). 5 Huang said that it was published in 1933; Cheng (1987) adopted this. I adopt Lin's 8 It was called the Maryknoll Taiwanese Gospels in The Book of a Thousand Tongues, 1935 here. and was known as the Ang5-poe5 Seng3-keng (The Red Cover Bible). 335 336 The Lexical Influence of the Bible Translation on Taiwanese Novel Writing, 1916-1998: A Computer-Assisted Corpus Analysis Dong Hwa Journal of Humanistic Studies.No.4 the proper thing to do since the Catholics who would be using this from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and his translation are mostly foreigners, while the Protestants are mostly colleagues, F. Doty and W. Young, developed a Romanized phonetic Taiwanese, for whom it would be easier to make any necessary system for colloquial Taiwanese in 1851 (Murakami, Yoshihide (村上 嘉 adaptation." Cheng (1987) called it Tai5-tiong dialect instead.