07-014 Scriptures of The Latter-day Saints and their Chinese translations

07-014
Scriptures of The Latter-day Saints and their Chinese translations 

Now, we are going to move on further to discuss Chinese translations of scriptures used by the Latter-day Saints, a.k.a. the Mormons.

“Hey! The Mormons are NOT Christians!” Yes, I know someone may complain. Personally, I am a Protestant Christian. My Bible contains only 66 books. Moroni was not found anywhere in my Bible. But as I mentioned earlier, the purpose of this blog is to discuss about culture. I am not going to judge whether a religious text is inspired or not. I simply list them out, telling you that they exist in my culture. You can have your own judgement, of course, but I would like to keep that away from my post.

Called as “the Standard Works”, scriptures of the Latter-day Saints consist of 4 parts:

1. The Authorized King James Version as the official scriptural text of the Bible
2. The Book of Mormon, subtitled since 1981 "Another Testament of Jesus Christ"
3. The Doctrine and Covenants (D&C)
4. The Pearl of Great Price (containing the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith–Matthew, Joseph Smith–History, and the Articles of Faith)

Let us see how well “the Standard Works” were translated.

According to the record of Hong Kong library, the first Chinese translation of The Book of Mormon was completed as early as 1967. The translator is Hu Wei-I (胡唯一). Hu was a Taiwanese Latter-day Saint. The Taiwan mission team invited him to translate The Book of Mormon into Chinese. After completing the Chinese translation of The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) and The Pearl of Great Price were also translated and first published as a single volume in 1982.

Early Chinese translation of The Book of Mormon

For the Bible part, although the Chinese King James Version CKJV is now available, the LDS church prefers using the Chinese Union Version CUV in their sermons. Furthermore, they are now in the progress of revising the original 1919 Chinese Union Version CUV text. Since CUV is already a century old translation, it has fallen into the public domain and anyone modify it without infringing any copyright.

Chinese translation of The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants (D&C)
and The Pearl of Great Price in one volume

Therefore, together with the widely available CUV, translations of Latter-day Saints’ scriptures into Chinese were completed in the early 80s. Since 2007, Chinese name of The Book of Mormon was renamed from《摩門經》to《摩爾門經》. All early translations were then revised and are now available on the official website of the Latter-day Saints or through their Bible app Gospel Library (iOS / Android).

The Book of Mormon is giving away free of charge

Physical copy is available to purchase through their online store. The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) and The Pearl of Great Price in a single volume is now selling at USD 6.75 each. Or, try visiting the LDS church in Hongkong. Sometimes, you can get a copy of The Book of Mormon from there free of charge. Early translations can be found in Hongkong Central Library reference book section.

Other, smaller branches of Latter Day Saints include other scriptures. Since those branches do not exist in my city, I am not going to mention them here. As far as I know, there are no official Chinese translations of those scriptures.

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