Evangelism in Translation: A Critical Study of Missionary-Scholar Walter Henry Medhurst’s Rendering of Chinese Agricultural Classic Nongzheng Quanshu

In 1807, a group of Protestant missionaries driven by evangelistic ideals arrived in China, dedicated to “winning China for Christ.” Walter Henry Medhurst of the London Missionary Society was among them. In addition to his preaching and study of Chinese orthodox classics, he translated the agricultural work Nongzheng Quanshu by Xu Guangqi, the very influential scholar-official of the late Ming dynasty, into English. This study explores how Medhurst’s unwavering missionary convictions influenced his secular translation praxis by examining his translational motivation, methodology and quality. He aimed to dispel Western misconceptions regarding Chinese silk-weaving techniques and then secure institutional patronage and integrate Chinese civilization under the auspices of Christian culture. Driven by the missionary mandate to convey the real China, he meticulously selected the Chinese version; and adopted a bilingual juxtaposition methodology for translating agricultural terms, thus inspiring prospective missionary students to acquire Chinese. Moreover, his scheduled missionary priority, assigned by the affiliated mission, constrained his engagement with the “amateur issues,” resulting in the translated language being less semantically equivalent, which in turn provides a pragmatic justification for the need to “civilize” China. Medhurst’s translation not only advanced his missionary enterprise, but also boosted Britain’s silk-weaving industry during the Industrial Revolution and prepared the way for the Western understanding of Chinese agricultural science from the late 19th century to the present. To this end, this analysis clearly revealed that translation was inextricably linked to the propagation of Christianity in religious communication.