Description

The Taiwanese Bible - Barclay Revised Version - Brown Coffe cover / Taiwanese Han Character Edition / Bible Society in Taiwan 2016 / TH60 Series / TH62BR / 巴克禮修訂版台語漢字

Softcover leather 2016
ISBN: 9789866674648 / 978-9866674648
ISBN-10: 9866674649
PAGES: 1392
PUBLISHER: Bible Society Taiwan
LANGUAGE: Taiwanese Chinese
Bible Dimensions: 22 x 15 cm

English Description:

The Bible translations into the languages of Taiwan are into Taiwanese, Hakka, Amis, and other languages of Taiwan.

In Taiwan, education from kindergarten to college is done in Mandarin Chinese (Chinese: 國語). Chinese is used in government offices and large corporations. The Bible text in Chinese is in Traditional Chinese, written vertically, rather than in Simplified Chinese, written horizontally.

The majority of the Taiwan people speak at home Taiwanese, sometimes called Taiwanese Hokkien or Min Nan Yu (Chinese: 閩南語) because their ancestors came from the southern part of China's Fujian Province. In 1916, Thomas Barclay finished the New Testament translation into Taiwanese Hokkien, followed by the Old Testament translation using Latin script in 1930. His entire NT/OT Bible, now called Amoy Romanized Bible (Chinese: 台語羅馬字聖經), was published in 1933. In 1996, this Bible was put into the Chinese characters, called Taiwanese Han Character Bible (Chinese: 台語漢字本聖經).

Thomas Barclay (Chinese: 巴克禮; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Pa-khek-lé; 21 November 1849 – 5 October 1935) was a missionary of the Presbyterian Church of England to Formosa (now called Taiwan) from 1875 until his death. His ministry in southern Taiwan has been compared to the work done in northern Taiwan by George Leslie Mackay. He founded Tainan Theological College and Seminary in 1876.

Barclay was also responsible for overseeing the translation of the Bible from English into Taiwanese, first the New Testament in 1916 and then the Old Testament in 1932. Both volumes are still in print today, and have a reputation for elegance and accuracy, although due to both the passage of time and the fact that the church dialect is rather removed from everyday speech, the prose can sound strange to modern ears.

His other major contribution to the study of the language was the Supplement to Dictionary of the vernacular or spoken language of Amoy, which accompanies Carstairs Douglas' Amoy-English dictionary, in essence "completing" the work, which up until then had lacked a character index to accompany the romanised entries.