Translations of Christian texts

Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 09:12:07 -0500

From: "Dan Duffy" <dduffy@email.unc.edu>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

Hi all,

Can someone direct me to an authority or simply chime in with perspectives on the history of translation of the Bible or New Testament, catechism, liturgy, prayers into Vietnamese?

Who has translated Christian materials? Did the first missionaries and believers undertake translation of scripture, or did the task wait for Protestants and the Counter-Reformation?

What have people used for source texts? Portugese? Japanese? French? Latin? English? Chinese? Any work directly from the Hebrew and Greek?

I'd be interested in hearing about the national minority languages as well, since that must be part of the story, but my interest is in Vietnamese.

As with the terms of address, I am batting around on my own, looking at title pages, not sure what's going on. Hoping someone already has a grip on this -

Dan

From: "George Dutton" <dutton@humnet.ucla.edu>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 07:46:36 -0800

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Hi Dan,

While I don't know about the earliest translations, I am currently working through a lot of writings by a later Vietnamese Jesuit - Philiphe Binh (1759-1833), who was among the more prolific translators of various religious materials. He wrote or translated into quoc ngu about a half-dozen lengthy biographies of saints (Xavier, Loyola, Borgia, etc. - all Jesuits) translated orders of worship, ways to perform the mass, etc. He also made substantial contributions to histories of martyrs in Vietnam - both European and Vietnamese. He used primarily Portuguese texts for his translations, though he could obviously read and did use sources in Latin as well.

You might also check Peter Phan's _Mission and Catechesis_, a study of Alexander du Rhodes' contributions to Vietnamese Catholicism, which discusses some of the early translations. Finally, the following website is quite interesting for giving a concise list of Vietnamese Catholic writers/translators in the pre-20th century period, including Binh and a variety of others.

http://www.missionstudies.org/asia/indo_china_siam_burma.htm

Hope this helps a bit.

George

________________________________

George Dutton

Chair, Southeast Asian Studies IDP

Assistant Professor

UCLA Department of Asian Languages and Cultures

290 Royce Hall

Box 951540

Los Angeles, CA 90095-1540

Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 10:36:21 -0800 (PST)

From: "Joe Hannah" <jhannah@u.washington.edu>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

Just an anecdote, Dan:

In Saigon a couple years ago I became acquainted with a number of foreign protestant missionaries working "undercover." One in particular was extremely proud of a new Vietnamese language Bible that he claimed was the first to be translated directly from the Greek and Hebrew texts into Vietnamese (rather than from English, etc.). It was supposedly done by a group of Bible scholars from Texas who had spent a number of years studying VIetnamese specifically for that purpose. I have no way of verifying the information, however, and I did not bring a copy of the Bible back from Vietnam, so I cannot give you any publishing information.

Joe Hannah

Geography

University of Washington, Seattle

Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 15:19:38 -0500

From: "Dan Duffy" <dduffy@email.unc.edu>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

OK, so

16, 17, 18 C - don't know what the RC orders were translating in their networks in and out of VN

19C - know from George there was a mature Catholic scholarship, translating and writing both ways, doing both original research and popularization, such as is still attested at the missions website and at the RC mission library in Paris

20 C - know there were French Protestant missionaries there from the 30s. they have have an archive in Paris. know there were Americans there from the 50s. they are retired here in North Carolina. don't know what they were translating.

21 C - know that Protestants are translating the Bible in their usual way.

That's a start. Thanks all.

Dan

Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 12:33:57 -0800 (PST)

From: "Jean Michaud" <michaudjean@yahoo.com>

Subject: Re: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Dan

If that is of any help, Antoine Brebion's "Dictionnaire de bio-bibliographie générale, ancienne et moderne, de l’Indochine francaise" (1935) lists just about every French RC priest (Jesuits, Dominicans, MEP, etc) to have set foot in SEA until c.1910, with a list of works and publications for the most important ones, including translations of various works into VN if I remember well. Could be a good start.

Best

Jean

Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 23:41:49 -0500

From: "Nhung Tuyet Tran" <nhungtuyet.tran@utoronto.ca>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: [Vsg] Vmese translations of christian texts

Hi Dan and All,

There exists quite a large number of Catholic texts written in nom from the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Of particular interest were texts attributed to the Jesuit Maiorca. Maiorca reportedly authored thousands of volumes of saints' tales. Brian Ostrowski, who is currently finishing a dissertation at Cornell, is writing on some of Maiorca's work. I've done some work comparing Maiorca's hagiography of the Vigin Mary with hagiographies of Quan Am Thi Kinh from that period.

Maiorca's hagiographies most certainly came from Europe. I think that some of Maoirca's stories were loose translations and retellings of Jacobus de Voragines's 14th century Golden Tales--at least the Mary and Theodora hagiographies.

Many of these texts begin with the phrase, "transmitted by the Jesuit missionary Jerome Maiorica (Gie su hoi si Gie-ro-ny-mo Mai-o-ri-ca thuat)--is the best transliteration I can make. However, in some volumes, in particular in the Thien CHua Thanh Mau hagiography, the texts ends with the

phrase, "pray for van nghiem as well," (cau cho van nghiem cung). Brian and I have talked extensively about this phrase and think that it probably refers to a scribe, perhaps formerly a buddhist monk. IF you look at the "Meeting of the Four Religions" (hoi ddong tu giao), a nineteenth century nom text ostensibly describing discourses between a confucian scholar, a buddhist monk,

taoist priest, and western missionary, we are told that the missionaries arguments about the afterlife so convinced the monk that he converted. While this text was certainly a piece of propaganda for the Catholics, there appear to be parallels between the narrative and stories about the scribe, Van Nghiem.

I hope this is somehow useful.

Best,

Nhung

U-Toronto

Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 22:49:20 +0100

From: "Oscar Salemink" <OJHM.Salemink@fsw.vu.nl>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Dan,

There were American Christian and Missionary Alliance missionaries in Vietnam (then: Indochina) from the early 20th C onward. In 1929 Rev Gordon Hedderly Smith and his wife Laura Smith arrived, who moved into the Central Highlands in the 1930s. During WW 2, back in the US, both published quite a bit on 'anthropology' and also rather sensationalist accounts of missionary work (as before them French catholic missionaries like Combes and Guerlach did), and they continued to publish into the 1960s when Vietnam became a household name in the US.

Beginning in the 1950s linguists/missionaries from the Summer Institute of Linguistics aka Wycliffe Bible Translators began to map ethnic languages in the VN Central Highlands, develop ethnic minority scripts, teaching materials in those scripts, and of course religious texts in vernacular. In the 1960s SIL and also CMA pastors were quite massively present in the Central Highlands of Vietnam - even publishing their own magazine (Jungle Frontiers). They preferred to work close to Special Forces camps and refugee camps.

I describe both Catholic and Evangelical discourses and practices in some chapters of my 2003 Central Highlands book (U Hawaii Press). An easier start - albeit far from complete - might be Gerald Anderson's 1966 Christianity in Southeast Asia: A bibliographical guide http://www.ttc.edu.sg/csca/rart_doc/anderson-66.pdf.

best,

Oscar Salemink

Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 16:37:09 -0800 (PST)

From: "Joe Hannah" <jhannah@u.washington.edu>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

Anecdotally, I met a small number (5 or 6) members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Hanoi (at Cafe 252, for those who know it). They had recently arrived from the US and were trying to find ways to get into the highlands to once again pick up their work on minority languages. Of course they were being thwarted by the authorities at every turn, they said. When I asked them if their goal was translating the Bible, one answered in a militant, in-your-face manner, "Yes! What of it!" I have

no idea if they ever got to their destination(s).

Joe Hannah

Geography

University of Washington, Seattle

Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006

From: "Charles Keith" <charles.keith@yale.edu>

To: vsg@u.washington.edu

Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts? Dear Dan and list,

A few brief comments to add to this thread. As quoc ngu texts increased in number and variety during the 20s and 30s, so did the extent to which Vietnamese Catholics were involved in translating "Catholic" texts into Vietnamese (usually from French, from what I have seen). This was a result of a number of things: the slow but steady decline in the number of European missionaries in Vietnam (which began roughly around the turn of the century), reforms in seminary education after WWI to make up for the lack of

missionaries (and members of European female religious orders) by better training

Vietnamese priests to teach in Catholic primary schools, a greater number of Vietnamese Catholics studying abroad (as often in Rome as in Paris), and the general rise in literacy that paralleled the quoc ngu explosion. Vietnamese translators of Catholic texts were often involved in other literary activites; some wrote articles for one of the growing number of Catholic newspapers in Vietnam (most notably Nam Ky Dia Phan in Saigon and Trung Hoa Nhat Bao in Hanoi), and translations of some Catholic texts were sometimes published first in serial form in these papers.

Some translators were trained as priests and others weren't, but it would be difficult for me to say anything much more accurate about the breakdown at this point. I think it's possible to say two things: a) certain types of texts were more likely to be translated by certain elements of the Vietnamese Catholic population - for example, morality texts were more likely to be written or translated by priests, while texts dealing more directly with economic/political issues were more often the focus of urban Catholic intellectuals, and b) the number of non-priests involved in translation increased towards the end of the interwar period. There was also a growing number of Vietnamese Catholics involved in writing/translating fiction - one prominent example is Le Van Duc, a secondary school teacher in a French colonial school and a close friend of the Ngo family who both wrote and translated plays. The types of texts that these Catholics translated also increased in scope during this period, and came to include not only bibles, catechisms, prayer manuals, etc., but also lives of saints and popes, plays and stories with Catholic themes, tracts on Catholic morality, etc.

In my opinion, the easiest way to get a quick overall picture of the nature of the Catholic quoc ngu sphere during this period is through the Bibliotheque Nationale's inventory of its Vietnamese language collection from this period, roughly 10,000 titles. The entries identify Catholic texts as such in the subject portion of the entry, list the text in uestion under both the original author and Vietnamese translator, and usually are pretty good about giving other publishing information (press, number of editions, etc.).

Charles Keith

Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 12:21:28 -0500

From: "Charles Keith" <charles.keith@yale.edu>

To: vsg@u.washington.edu

Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

One thing to add to my last message. From what I've seen, unlike Catholic texts, Protestant texts during the interwar period were almost always translated into Vietnamese by the American missionaries that Oscar mentioned. That said, I'm sure these missionaries had a great deal of

uncredited assistance.

-Charles

Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 12:51:41 -0500

From: quang.van@yale.edu

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>, "Charles Keith" <charles.keith@yale.edu>

Subject: RE: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

CC: vsg@u.washington.edu

I also want to add to Charles Keith's remarks. The great Vietnamese writer Phan Khoi was hired by the CM&A to translate the Bible into Vietnamese (1913?). There are several memoirs written by former missionaries to VN (Irwin and Stebbins). The Vietnamese Christian and Missionary District in the U.S. (Little Saigon) has a good collection of many of the earliest texts) and also reprinted

copies.

Quang

From: vsg-bounces@mailman1.u.washington.edu on behalf of Diane Fox (dnfox)

Sent: Sun 1/8/2006 10:31 AM

To: Vietnam Studies Group

Subject: Re: RE: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

Another anecdote--

It would have been 1993 or so, if memory serves. A young woman from "The Summer Institute of Linguistics" was sometimes a guest for dinner at the family's house where I often ate. At one point when I asked her "Isn't that the Wycliff Bible Institute?" she looked alarmed, put her finger to her lips and said "Shhhhh... We don't say that over here." And I thought, doesn't Christianity have something to say about honesty? At that point she and/or colleagues were in the Central Highlands working with computers in some capacity, she said. When I asked my host family if they knew the work of the guest they were hosting,and then explained, they were alarmed in turn.

Diane

Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 12:15:56 +1100

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

From: "David Marr" <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>

Subject: Re: RE: [Vsg] Vietnamese translations of Christian texts?

My wife and I were staying a the Vien Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi compound in HCMC in 1989 or 1990 (from memory) when the director introduced me to a ranking member of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, who said he was the first to return since the end of the war. He desperately wanted to get permission to travel in the central highlands. It seemed the director was unfamiliar with the connection between SIL and US Special Forces before 1973, so I offered him a two or three sentence summary. He showed no outward concern. The SIL leader did not get his trip to the

highlands,but an agreement was reached (at least in principle) that individual informants could be invited down to HCMC to help in translation efforts. Probably the young woman that Diane met was part of the follow-through. Did she and other SIL members get to the highlands?

David

Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 07:33:34 -0500

From: "Dan Duffy" <dduffy@email.unc.edu>

To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: [Vsg] Vietnamese translation of Christian texts: chronology and one more question

Thanks all once more for the rich responses. Now that I have a general idea from experts and first-hand accounts it will be easier to use the library. I appreciate it. Here is another chronology with resources and contacts that I hope may be useful to someone else as well.

I'm motivated to obsess over this topic by a general observation about bibles. If you ask how a bible got into your hand in your vernacular, you will learn something about most of the history of the humanities, sciences and civil institutions of the modern world.

So I want to know where my Vietnamese bible came from. From the replies so far, the answer will say a lot about the use of nom and quoc ngu, about the attitudes of RC church towards Vietnamese and vice-veras, ditto for Protestants, the role of the central highlands, the history of print in Viet Nam, and even the church affiliations of Vietnamese studies scholars.

One more question before I head into the library, something I might not find written down. What is the relationship of C&MA and SIL?

Dan

Chronology of the Bible and Christian Scriptures in Viet Nam and

Vietnamese

compiled from contributions of Viet Nam Studies Group

pre-16 C no reported Christians

16 C no report on translation yet

17 and 18 C Jerome Maiorca, a Jesuit, and possibly Van Nghiem translating hagiography from Jacobus de Voreagines (14C) into Vietnamese in chu nom script. Reported by Nhung Tuyet Tran with reference to Brian Ostrowski.

Early translations associated with Alexandre du Rhodes, presumably in

quoc ngu (discussed in Peter Phan, Missions and Catechesis, reported by Goerge Dutton)

Bibliographical sources for this and later: Antoine Brebion, focusing

on French RC, "Dictionnaire de bio-bibliographie ginirale, ancienne et moderne, de l.Indochine francaise" (1935) (reported by Jean Michaud)

Publications from this period and possibly earlier cited at

http://www.missionstudies.org/asia/indo_china_siam_burma.htm (both reported by George Dutton)

19C Philippe Binh, a Jesuit, (1759-1833) translating hagiography and martyrology into Vietnamese into quoc ngu, using Portugese sources with reference to Latin. (reported by George Dutton who is working on Binh)

According to a colleague replying off-list, not wishing to give an

expert opinion, the RC church in the 19C and early 20C did not emphasize translation of scriptures themselves.

20C Over the 20s and 30s local Vietnamese took over much Roman Catholic translating, venturing as well into newspapers, eg Nam Ky Dia Phan in SG and Trung Hoa Nhat Bao in HN, and fiction, eg author Le Van Duc.

(Extensive and detailed historical report from Charles Keith, 1/8/2006, reproduced below with reference to the the Bibliotheque Nationale's inventory of its Vietnamese language collection from this period,roughly 10,000 titles")

Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) active in Indochina from early in

the century.

Phan Khoi hired by C&MA to transalate bible into Vietnamese in 1913.

(reported by Quang Phu Van, also Chung Nguyen, with reference to US memoirs by missionaries Irwin and Stebbins, and with reference to "Vietnamese Christian and Missionary District in the US (Little Saigon)" holding a collection of early texts and reprints.)

C&MA widespread in colonial Viet Nam, according to David Deltesta, "as far north as Son Tay and Viet Tri and as for north as Cau Mau" and the network continued through the RVN era and is "official" Protestant church of Viet Nam.

David Deltesta who reports this suggests they were the only Protesetant

group allowed by the French to evangelize in Indochina. I visited an archive in Paris of Protestant missionaires from France active in Indochine at that time. Can't find the address right now.

More from David Deltesta: "One student conducted research on the Christian and Missionary Alliance presence in Vietnam. Before traveling to Vietnam, he did a few days of research at the archives of the C&MA in Colorado Springs. The archivists were quite helpful. You can find his (Michael Barker's) paper at http://www.bucknell.edu/Beaucarnot/bios.shtml, although it lacks what we discovered in Vietnam because we decided to keep the interviews we did private...remember, it's an undergraduate's paper!"

A reference from Charles Keith: there is a dissertation on the historyof the Evangelical Church in Vietnam. The title is: "A Short History of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam, 1911-1965" (Unpublished dissertation, New York University, 1972). The author is Dr. Phu Hoang Le, who (from the dissertation bio) "served 25 years with the C&MA Tin Lanh Church in Vietnam. His last position there was academic dean of Nha Trang Theological College. He then served 25 years in the United States as a C&MA missionary on loan to the FEBC radio translating The Living Bible into Vietnamese."

Rev Gordon Hedderly Smith and wife Laura Smith working in the 1930s,publishing memoirs in US after WWII. (reported by Oscar Salemink who also cites French missionaires Combes and Guerlach. Charles Keith points out that Protestants did their own translating, with unattributed local assistance.)

Wycliffe Bible Translators, also known as Summer Institute of Linguistics, active in central highlands from the 1950s, developing scripts and materials in minority languages. In the 1960s both CMA and SIL active in highlands near USASF (Green Beret) and refugee camps, publishing magazine Jungle Frontiers (from Oscar Salemink - for more go to his 2003 press on the highlands from U of Hawaii Press, 2003. He also cites Gerald Anderson, Christianity in Souteast Asia, with a bibliography online at tp://www.ttc.edu.sg/csca/rart_doc/anderson-66.pdf.

According to the off-list non-expert colleague, after the Third Vatican Council on the 1960s, the importance of the Word of God for comminicants has been re-empahsized.

21C From David Deltesta: "the current pastor of the Nha Trang church is the son of a Vietnamese C&MA pastor himself who worked in the North. I think it's interesting to see both Protestant and Cao Dai churches as far North now as Dong Ha; I haven't heard much about the popularity of Protestantism in the Central Highlands for quite a while, since the

horrible "difficulties" of 2003." See above note about archive in Colorado and recent field research paper by undergraduate.

Protestants working "undercover" in Saigon (if you can call it that when you tell people you are when they ask. I would say "plainclothes") told Joe Hannah 'a few years ago' about a recent translation direct from original texts of old and new testaments by Bible scholars in Texas who had learned Vietnamese. He met another group in Ha Noi who did mean to translate the bible. David Marr had earlier encounters in Saigon ca.

1989/1900 and Diane Fox in Ha Noi in the 90s. I remember hearing in 1994-6 in HN that they had got permission to teach in Ha Noi. We don't yet know if that have got back to the highlands yet.

SIL has an association with oil companies (reported by Chung Nguyen,citing The Conquest of the Amazon, Colby and Dennet, 1995)

Later Day Saints known to be in Ha Noi (reported by Mark Sidel). Translating Book of Mormon?

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