ABSTRACT
The process of Bahá’í translation into Chinese started with the production of a leaflet on the theme of war and peace in the late 1910s, continued in the early 1920s with the translation of a Bahá’í booklet, and expanded with the more extensive translation work undertaken in the 1930s and 1940s, before coming to a temporary halt on the Chinese mainland in 1949 due to changes in social and political realities. Careful examination of this history, which has often been overlooked in translation studies, reveals broad similarities and significant differences between Bahá’í translation and the practices adopted in the buddhist, biblical and qur’anic translation projects in the Chinese context. This chapter examines critical issues involved including attitudes to translatability of sacred texts, the choice between literary and vernacular Chinese, the challenges in rendering such key terminologies as God, and the role of paratexts and political ideology in scriptural translation.
