The Holy Word Factory: Translation, Syncretism, Language Ideology, and Colonial Language Dynamics at the Crossroads of Religion and Empire

The Protestant missionary movement played a key role in colonial language dynamics and conceptual change, and one way in which it did so was through translation. The process of registering and standardising languages for the sake of missionary translation was a global phenomenon that acquired industrial proportions in the nineteenth century with mass-produced catechisms, primers, and cheap Bibles and Gospels. That global translation industry not only was a major factor in the spread of literacy worldwide; it also spread printing and formal instruction, reshaped or replaced extant literary traditions, and introduced a new prestige register with Christian neologisms into the target language, along with the language(s) of the coloniser. The result was large-scale socio-cultural transformation and disenfranchisement. This article is concerned with these colonial language dynamics, the underlying language ideologies, and the cultural consequences. In particular, it discusses four cases: (1) the Māori language with its strongly regimented oral traditions and centuries of development in isolation; (2) the complex patchwork of languages, writing systems, overlapping religious traditions, and social-linguistic hierarchies in Dutch Indonesia; (3) the Surinamese Creole language Sranan Tongo, one of the first creoles to be studied and written down; and (4) the 1940 BFBS conference on African languages.