04 — Translation Work

The heart of Nicholas’s labor: the decades-long translation of the New Testament and the full cycle of Orthodox services into Japanese, carried out with the Confucian scholar Nakai Tsugumaro four hours every evening for thirty years; and the deliberate choice of a high, classical Japanese register, sacral and enduring.

This section treats what Nicholas himself called the core of missionary work — the rendering of Scripture and the services into the language of Japan, in a form meant to last.

Files

File Description
the-japanese-scriptures-and-liturgy.md The collaboration with Nakai Tsugumaro; the method (Slavonic and Greek source, Japanese polishing); the New Testament (1901) and the service books; the four-hour evenings over thirty years.
language-and-culture.md The classical/Sino-Japanese (bungo/kanbun) register; the choices behind it; translation as enculturation; the texts still in use today.

See Also