論巴克禮閩南語《聖經》的詞彙問題

Abstract

巴克禮《新約聖經》譯本是在1916 年出版，《舊約聖經》是1933 年出版，所以這本《聖經》保存了大量的早期閩南語的語言材料。在巴克禮譯本之前，已出版文言文、淺近文言文、官話漢譯本，以及閩南語譯本，本文將藉由觀察各種譯本在詞彙選用上的異同，以探索巴克禮譯本的詞彙特色。透過對巴克禮譯本的研究，一來有助於瞭解早期閩南語書面語文獻在語言運用上的情形，二來可以觀察早期閩南語的特有詞彙。又，巴克禮譯本的詞彙選用是否存在著系統性，對於那些概念相同或相近的詞彙，在語用上是否有明顯分工或互競的現象，也是本文討論的重點。

Barclay’s translation of the New Testament was published in 1916, and his Old Testamentin 1933. Both of these works preserve many of the linguistic forms of early Southern Min.Since translations of the Bible in classical Chinese, simple classical Chinese, Mandarin, andSouthern Min all existed before Barclay’s version, this article will compare and contrast thesimilarities and differences in the use of vocabulary in various translations, and explore thelexical features of Barclay’s translation. An investigation into Barclay’s works would help usunderstand the language use in earlier written literature as well as observe some of the uniquevocabulary of Southern Min at the time. This article will further discuss whether the lexicalselection of Barclay’s translation is systematic, and whether words with the same or similarmeaning have an obvious distinction or are mutually competing in terms of pragmatics.