The Influence of the Translators’ Theology on Bible Translation: A Comparative Study of the Chinese Union Version and the Chinese Recovery Version of the New Testament

Abstract

The influence of theology on Bible translation is a phenomenon that has been increasingly acknowledged by Bible translation scholars in recent decades, yet for various reasons including the long-established secular-sacred divide in modern academia, it has remained an underexplored subject in both the fields of Translation Studies (TS) and biblical translation studies (BTS). To address this gap, this study is the first study that examines the influence of the translators’ theology on Bible translation by a comparative study of two New Testament translations in their entirety, and it is also the first study of this kind on both the Chinese Union Version (CUV) and the Chinese Recovery Version (CRV), with the CUV being the most popular and influential Chinese Bible over the last hundred years. By adopting a new theoretical framework for studying theological influence in Bible translation, by following a methodology that minimizes the researcher’s subjectivity and overcomes the difficulties inherent in such a study, and by analyzing and presenting the empirical findings according to the main subjects of systematic theology, this study discovered that the translators’ understandings of what God’s overall plan is for mankind exerted the most dominant and overarching influence on their Bible translations in the cases of the CUV and the CRV. Besides revealing many other new insights concerning how the translators’ theology may influence Bible translation, this study also offers both methodological and theoretical contributions to the fields of BTS and TS, illuminates the way and importance of conducting similar studies on other Bible translations, points to the need of charting a new sub-field called ‘biblical translator studies’, and shows that to understand and speak about any Bible translation, we must thoroughly understand the translators’ theology.