A Possible Approach to the Translation Critique of the Chinese New Living Translation: Towards a Combined Holistic Method for Evaluating a “Daughter Translation”

The Chinese New Living Translation (CNLT, 2012) is a daughter translation of the American NLT (1996), a very popular Bible translation in the English-speaking world. By its own account, it follows the style and the character of the American “mother version” with its lively, easy-to-understand and easy-to-read contemporary language, coupled with exegetical accuracy. The interesting question that arises in this paper is how to methodically study the purposes and specifics of a daughter translation such as CNLT. A multi-step method is proposed with the aim of evaluating CNLT with a view to its self-imposed goals. As a short example, the method is applied to a passage in Ps 23 to illustrate the approach. The specific problems of CNLT as a daughter translation such as error propagation and the acceptability problem are addressed in a final hermeneutical and missiological reflection.