| William Edward Soothill,the British missionary,spent 25 years doing missionary work in Wenzhou,China,devoting himself to the job of translating the Bible into Wenzhou dialect.In terms of language style,the Bible translated by Soothill is a dialect colloquial version;in terms of written script,the version was translated in the Romanization system created by missionaries.Therefore,his Bible translation has its unique merits.This dissertation is a case analysis of The Gospel of Matthew in The Four Gospels and Acts(1894).It compares the text with other translation versions,the textbook of Wenzhou dialect written at nearly the same time as the Bible,and some modern materials of Wenzhou dialect,describes some language phenomenon in the text in the aspects of content words,structural words and word order,and explores the roots behind these hybrid components.The:first chapter focuses on content words and expressions,and points out that these words and expressions can be categorized into 3 groups:a.pure Wenzhou dialect's elements;b.those borrowed from Mandarin or can be used in both languages;c.those borrowed from English.The second chapter discusses structural words,and concludes that five usages of structural words,including the preposition "?",the interrogative particle "?" and the mandarin component "?",are not authentic dialect elements in the 19th century.The third chapter focuses on word order,and reaches the conclusion that the usual comparative sentence pattern,the postposition of the object,the head-initial phenomenon and the"effect-cause" causality sentences are not normal expressions in Wenzhou dialect at that time.It is undeniable that the versions of the Bible translated by missionaries have significant value in studying Chinese dialects a century before as well as their diachronic evolution.However,it must be noticed that due to the limitations of missionaries' language background and language capability,their works should be used very carefully in historical studies. |
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