Author: YANG Jing, Assistant Professor, Foreign Languages College, Jiangxi Normal University.
Abstract:
In 1910, the British Baptist missionary Timothy Richard translated the Heart Sutra(心经) into English and included it in his collection of translations, The Advanced Buddhist New Testament (高级佛教新约). Later, in his 1913 English translation of Journey to the West, he used it as an English translation of the Heart Sutra given to Master Xuanzang (Book 19), with only minor modifications to its mantra. However, this short 260-word sutra has been trimmed by the same 52 words in both translations, which has not received much attention in current scholarship. Based on a large amount of primary historical evidence, this paper argues that the meaning of the words “eternal” and “manifested” in the translation are key to Richard`s construction of Jesus’ divine and human nature, and that the omission of the text is intended to highlight the divine and human nature of Jesus in the translation and erase elements irrelevant to Jesus. The study concludes that explanations of phenomenon of translation should begin with historical sources closely related to translators such as the paratexts and parallel translations; by combining translation studies and history, the conclusions drawn are more persuasive.
Keywords:
Heart Sutra, Timothy Richard, translation, Jesus
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