명·청대(明淸代) 서양 선교사의 학술 번역 활동 연구

Abstract

The Western missionaries who entered China in the late Ming Dynasty & early Qing Dynasty and the late Qing Dynasty had impacts on the various areas of the country. There were several major religious sects dispatched to China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties including the Society of Jesus and the Fransisco Society, and the missionaries of the Society of Jesus had the strongest influence compared with those of other religious sects. Approximately 400 missionaries of the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus went to China and engaged in translation activities for about 200 years from 1582 when Matteo Ricci made his first step into the country to 1773 when the Society was dismantled. Then a new religious sect of Christianity called Protestantism entered China in the late Qing Dynasty. Western colonialism began to spread toward China since its entry into the country in the 19th century along with Protestant missionaries mainly from the U.K. and the U.S.A. As a result, Chinese society faced a period of new changes. It was Robert Morrison, an American Protestant missionary born in the U.K., who entered mainland China first and engaged in activities to spread Protestantism and do translation. The translation activities of Protestant missionaries lasted less than 100 years between 1815 and 1898 in the late Qing Dynasty. In this period, their translation activities were closely connected to the trend of social changes in the late Qing Dynasty, and the missionaries translated books on natural and social science and spread them in the country.