Missionary translations of liturgical texts into the languages of the indigenous peoples of the Russian Empire until 1917
Abstract
Christian missionaries on the territory of the Russian Empire fulfilling their duties also created grammars, dictionaries or alphabets of indigenous languages from different language families. The process of preaching Christianity was associated with the need to translate the liturgy into languages of the recently baptized inhabitants.
The purpose of the report is to present in the context of missionary linguistics the approach of the Russian Orthodox Church to the translation of divine liturgy before 1917. We researsched texts of the theoreticians of Orthodox missionary activity, such as N.
I. Ilminsky, as well as the texts of translations of the All-Night Vigil and the Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom in the 19th century. into Yakut, Karelian, Altai, Mari, Udmurt, Abkhazian, Komi and other languages.
Particular attention is paid to the translations of nomina sacra or theological Christian terms ("Wisdom", "Holy Spirit", "Holy Trinity", "Mother of God", "bless", "save"...), for which in many languages the corresponding expressions were simply absent. Some of studied translations of the service (for example, into the Komi language, 1883) were also published together with a short dictionary.
Research materials will be compared with available introductions to the missionary grammars of these languages and placed in the context of missionary linguistic studies of that time.