Contingent Companion with the Cantonese: Uncovering a Hidden History of Written Cantonese Christian Literature in the Late Nineteenth Century^†

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

perhaps you should add an example of how written Cantonese was already used during the Ming dynasty.

Author Response

At page 4, I have mentioned the written Cantonese had been used during entertainment, i.e., sung scripts.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper was very interesting. The author has provided a clear and organized paper on the development of the MUV and connections with written Cantonese. 

The written Cantonese language is an important area of study and one that has been highlighted in recent Podcasts. This article is looking at its importance in the translation of the Bible but it is also more generally an important topic.

For the sources I noted that all were good and more recent sources with a mixture of Chinese and English publications. However, I only noted one source from the missionary period. I wonder if there were any discussions within the missionary community at the time about the use of written Cantonese. 

I would have liked to see a few examples of the written Cantonese characteristics that are noted on page 4: "unique Chinese characters, romanization, borrowing other Chinese characters with the same sound (“phonetic borrowing”), and lastly rediscovering ancient characters." Perhaps there isn't room in the paper for the author to include this.

At the beginning of the paper the author seems to note that Mandarin Union Version and Mandarin Union Bible should be the same. However, they refer to it as Version early and late in the text (MUV) while using Mandarin Union Bible (not version) on page 5. Are these the same and, if so, should they be referred to in the same way (perhaps even using MUV) each time? 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I think the use of English was fine. There are some issues related to word choice or linking words that could use correction but overall it seems to be quite well written.

There were some issues with style and the author's habit of referring to themselves in the paper that I don't usually like to see in scholarly papers. Perhaps this is an related to moving from presentation to published paper. However, this is more of a preference than something I would require and it may fit the style of the journal. I noted this on pages 3, 5, and 6.  

 

Author Response

1. For the missionary sources, I added two more references to show the illiteracy of written Mandarin to justify the missionary work of written Cantonese. See, Reports of the British and Foreign Missionary Society 1870 and General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China 1878. Moreover, I must admit that this paper is not based on historical research, but a literature review by interdisciplinary studies to address the phenomenon of using written Cantonese for Christian literature and the bible.

2. On page 4, regarding the illustration of written Cantonese via Chinese Characters, I am afraid to take more words to explain. It is not the focus of the paper.

3. Since I am discussing the plan to translate "the Mandarin Union Bible" in the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China in Shanghai in 1890, the MUV was only published in 1919. It is not confusing even though I continue to use "the Mandarin Union Bible" in 1890.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In principle, this article is a worthwhile study into Cantonese Christian literature, particularly by tracking Bible translations. However, only pp. 5-7 of the text -- 2.5 pages out of 10 -- is really about Cantonese Christian literature. I would encourage the author to revise the paper significantly so that much more of the paper is about these textual readings, as that is the real import of the work.

I can see why the author feels that the Cantonese historical background is important. Much of the preceding pages to the textual genealogy is important engagement with scholars of Cantonese and the Sinophone, including Gina Anne Tam and David Faure. But the task of this article is not to review the literature on written Cantonese, important background as it might be. It is to demonstrate how written Cantonese through Christian literature developed a Cantonese, if not Hong Kong, identity.

To execute this argument -- which I must reinforce is very important -- two things have to happen in the article. First, the story of how western missionaries created a written Cantonese should be told more fully. The author at this point writes about how it developed a sort of two-tier system in which only the literate could read it, but the Christianity of this enterprise needs to be underscored. Second, the author blazes through the review of Bible translations. I would encourage the author to unpack how these Bible translations were used in churches and how that leads to the identity formation the author claims that these texts enacted.

Finally, the author gestures very briefly at the end to how Hong Kong Christians have been dormant about developing a written Cantonese through Bible translations. This is an interesting claim, as there has been a great deal of development in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in Cantonese worship music, some of which was even used in the recent protests. 愛是不保羅 and 誰曾應許, among many other songs, could be considered part of an evangelical canon, sung frequently in Cantonese churches around the world. Could it be that worship music, choruses, and so on are the new place in which Cantonese is development?

In short, I recommend a revise-and-resubmit in which the author radically revises this promising article into a fully formed argument for understanding how written Cantonese enables identity formation through Christian texts.

Author Response

Thanks for your comments.

1. Regarding the main text, I have added more paragraphs to discuss how missionaries observed the illiteracy of local Cantonese in written Mandarin in the 1870s, the decade in which Western missionaries committed to written Cantonese translation.
2. I agree that I spent more paragraphs to illustrate the Cantonese identity, Written Cantonese history, and the politics of language and dialect in the context of China. This information is significant to understanding the language context of the 19th century when Western Protestant missionaries arrived in China. I think the proportion of this background information is acceptable in this paper.
3. I agree that tracing how the Cantonese Bible circulated in the Cantonese Church community is important. However, I admit I can't fulfill this in the paper because of the limited time.
4. I have added a more clear illustration of my claim in the conclusion. Moreover, I also claim that this paper only discusses "written Cantonese". How Spoken Cantonese in HK churches shapes HK Christian identity is out of scope of the research. Thank you.