Missionary and Translation Activities of Saint Nicholas Equal of the Apostles, Archbishop of Japanese

Abstract

Created by St. Nicholas’s missionary translations are a treasure he left for Japan. Missionary translation work required the Saint to solve a difficult task — the synthesis of essentially heterogeneous biblical-Christian and national-Japanese traditions. The peculiarity of translation into Japanese is its two-part nature: Japanese spoken language and actually written Chinese. This language for the archpastor was the Japanese literary language — bungo. Thanks to the use of bungo St. Nikolai managed to maintain a high standard of the translation language and avoid any vernacular and vulgarisms in the language of worship. Another challenge was the choice of vocabulary necessary to accurately express theological concepts. A special Orthodox-Theological Dictionary was developed in Japanese. The New Testament and most liturgical books were completely translated into Japanese.