ABSTRACT
At the general mission conference in 1877, the topic was discussed for the first time publicly. One of the strongest advocates for such a translation was Griffith John of the London Missionary Society station from Hankou, who was to publish a translation of the New Testament (NT) into the lower form of classical Chinese in 1885. Burdon, who was to publish a NT translation in lower classical with Blodget in 1889, described it "as practically the same thing as the Mandarin, with the exception of the pronouns and particles." The translation efforts of Burdon and Blodget were only started as a response to John's translation activities. John's Mandarin translation on the basis of his classical translation has been described as an "elegant dual-version". The American Blodget and the Englishman Burdon, two of the Peking Version translators, started the work on a lower classical translation of the NT in 1884.
