The Chinese Bible And Cultural Capital

This dissertation,the Chinese Bible and Cultural Capital,originates in my own work as a doctoral candidate in the field of sociology since September,2002.My project is to exploit social,cultural and religious issues by tracing the history of Chinese Bible in which so many people have worked before and are still working today,although from various standpoints,with the explicit aims of locating alternatives,of exploring that Chinese Bible translation history that is in constant motion and debate.Admittedly,there has been penetrative insight into the act of the Chinese Bible translation,into the phenomenological aspect of this act whose historical narratives,as presented here,have spanned centuries and various Chinese Bible versions,but even though based on detailed research,they are necessarily selective in articulating key moments and controversies,and frankly polemical in studying the history to question the marginal position of Chinese Bible translation in Chinese society and culture.Nevertheless,I focus on three major periods in the third chapter: the Nestorian Christianity(or Nestorianism) in Tang Dynasty,the Catholic covering the late Ming Dynasty and the early Qing Dynasty,and the Protestant since the 19^th century.From time to time,my research touches on events and their consequences of Chinese Bible outside its immediate concern,but it can do so only briefly,since they reflect social and cultural patterns that require to be explored in their own time and context.A project with its centrality to social,religious and cultural interaction will inevitably come to rely on the help and support of, besides sociological theories,many other academic and intellectual disciplines such as linguistics,history studies,culture studies, religious studies as well as translation studies which have converged on the study of Chinese Bible translation as a central locus of inquiry, providing a fund of theoretical and practical studies that the present work draws upon.It is true that the history of Chinese Bible is a vast subject,and that my dissertation is a relatively short book which of necessity has had to adopt a specific and therefore limited perspective. Actually,the relationship between Chinese Bible translation and cultural phenomena has also been a leitmotif of both sociology and translationstudies,thanks to cultural turn of translation studies since late twentieth century:on the one hand there has been an increased understanding of the cultural aspects of translation,and on the other hand a greater awareness of the role of translation in broad areas of human culture.Accordingly,this book argues that the Chinese Bible translation is paradoxically the means by which difference of the Christianity and local Chinese religions is perceived,preserved,projected and conflicted. Furthermore,this book also believes that translation is not simply a locus of languages transfer,but a site of resistance and church building as well.The apparently neutral,academic,and recondite Chinese Bible translation has been an arena of intense religious,ideological and even political activity.Thus,the process of Chinese Bible translation is a powerful process through which different churches with their own sense of authority and identity have been established.Not surprisingly,then, Chinese Bible translation studies is a fundamental aspect of religious studies as well as cultural studies,and it is instructive for an understanding of "cultural capital",which turns out to be the important concept throughout my work on Chinese Bible translation. Therefore,the purpose of the second chapter is to attempt such a definition and to outline a framework of cultural capital that can serve as a means for examining the sociological issues concerning the Chinese Bible.Though the term Cultural Capital originates from Pierre Bourdieu, the prestige French sociologist,I have used it in my own way,just to meet the need of my own research approach.To study Chinese Bible translation in this way is to engage in a descriptive studies of translation,which,when they attend to process, product,and function,set translation practices in time and,thus by extension,in politics,ideology,economic and culture.Such approaches naturally entail the revisionism shaping all fields,domains of inquiry, and discourses that pertain to Chinese Bible translation,just to meet the requirement of sociological approach.They in turn reveal translators' strategies,the cultural and religious pressures exerted on translators as they recreate a realty constructed by a source text, and the functions of the translation in the receiving culture.This book touches on these issues respectively in three chapters.Chapter Fourexplores how the term of the Christianity' s Creator has experienced various symbolic transformations in the process of translating the Bible into Chinese,so as to reveal the process of localization and contextualization of Christianity Doctrine.As it is,the Chinese Bible translation turns out a social alchemy which undermines social,cultural and religious issues,and the various symbolic transformations reflect the distinctness and standpoints of different churches.In Chapter Five,the author argues that the spread of religion depends on the translation of its classics,to construct its authority,which is indispensable to symbolic performance that is integral part of religious spread.Based on this,the author seeks to show the explicit and implicit function of Chinese Bible in the process of constructing the Christianity authority. However,both the cultural capital and symbolic power retained and Chinese traditional cultural should be recognized.Chapter Six focuses on the detailed analysis of,first of all,the logic features of Chinese Bible translation,the three major forms of cultural capital——concrete, objectified and institutional forms of cultural capital,and the construction of Christianity identity.Conclusively,this book believes that the Chinese Bible translation is the process of production and re-production of cultural capital,which is closely related to authority,institution as well as power.The main ideas and approached included in this book can be framed in the forms of a series of question as follows:a special field such as Chinese Bible translation,how has it formed and developed? What role has it played in the process of Chinese cultural development? How has it got the individuals engaged in competing for valuable resources? How does it imperceptibly contribute to the religious stratifications in China? How and in what degree is it influenced by power and ideology? How has it contributed to the construction of Christianity authority and identity? Obviously,what is expressed in this book only represents my personal opinions which will inevitably continue to be the subject of so many acrimonious debates,tanslation is not a window opened on another world. Rather,translation is a channel opened,through which foreign influences can penetrate the native culture,challenge it,and even contribute to subverting it.