Bridging worlds: Language, translation and missionary accommodation in Yuan China (13th–14th centuries)

This article examines linguistic mediation and missionary accommodation in Yuan China during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, situating evidence from Yuan territory within the wider multilingual context of the Mongol world. Drawing on missionary letters, travel narratives, papal documents and Chinese administrative sources, it analyses how access to languages, interpreters, translation and teaching shaped missionaries’ capacity to communicate and exercise religious authority. Particular attention is given to the contrasting experiences of William of Rubruck and Giovanni da Montecorvino. While Rubruck’s dependence on interpreters reveals the constraints imposed by limited linguistic access, Montecorvino’s reported competence in Mongolian enabled translation, reading and preaching, although the surviving evidence does not permit reconstruction of his language-learning methods. His simultaneous translation of Christian texts into Mongolian and teaching of Greek and Latin further shows that missionary accommodation combined adaptation with the transmission of European linguistic practices. Yuan administrative sources provide a complementary perspective by showing how Christianity was incorporated into imperial structures of religious governance. The article argues that linguistic mediation was constitutive of missionary activity because access to linguistic resources shaped the distribution of communicative agency and, consequently, the conditions under which religious authority could be exercised. • Investigates missionary linguistic accommodation in Yuan China. • Analyses translation and interpreting in cross-cultural encounters. • Examines multilingual communication in the Mongol Empire. • Draws on European and Chinese historical sources. • Reframes missionary activity through the lens of language mediation.