Editor Chiang

One of China's current best-sellers is a brand-new edition of the Psalms, translated by a Roman Catholic, edited by a Methodist. The translator: U.S.-educated Dr. John C. H. Wu, J.D. The editor: Chiang Kaishek, President of the National Government and Commander in Chief.

The preface to the new 141-page psalter is a letter from Chiang to his great & good friend, Translator Wu, with a photostat of one of the Generalissimo's own editorial emendations brushed on the manuscript's wide margin. Says the letter:

"Dear comrade. . . . Because I know nothing of foreign languages I have been unable to give you any help of consequence, an inability which I regret as much as anything in my whole life. But I regard your translation as superior to any before it.-I hope you will continue until you have finished the entire New Testament. Thus you will slake the thirst of all Christians in China . . . and help our Christianity spread ever more widely. Best wishes, Chung-cheng" (Chiang's intimate or "courtesy" signature).

Translator Wu intends to devote much of his future to slaking his country's Christian thirst. In Rome, where he goes this month to represent China at the Vatican, he will work on his translation of the New Testament. Eventually he hopes to publish a volume of confessions dealing with his own religious experiences.

Talented Amateur. Youthful-looking, bespectacled John Wu, 48, earned his

J.D. at the University of Michigan in 1921, studied later at Paris and Berlin universities. But as a Bible translator he is, like his editor, a talented amateur. He is one of China's outstanding constitutional lawyers, helped draft the May 5 constitution, helped also with the draft constitution that President Chiang presented last week to the National Assembly (see FOREIGN NEWS).

Wu was converted to Christianity while studying at Shanghai's Methodist mission school in 1918. At first he was devout, but, says he: "Gradually my religious zeal ebbed because of conflict within the Methodist Church between fundamentalists and modernists. I myself couldn't make up my mind. . . ." But when the Generalissimo was delivered from Kidnaper Chang Hsueh-liang in 1936, Convert Wu considered it a "miracle," began to study religion once again. "I discovered that, for myself, fundamentalism wasn't fundamental enough, modernism wasn't modern enough. In 1937 I was admitted into the Catholic Church."

In translating the Psalms the Catholic-Methodist team worked well. Wu's Chinese rendering was based primarily on various Catholic translations in French and English; the unilingual Generalissimo checked against his familiar Protestant versions, indicating his likes & dislikes. Then Wu worked over the passages the Generalissimo did not like, sometimes made three or four tries before it was right. When Editor Chiang nodded and said, "Hao hao (Good good)," Translator Wu knew the team was in agreement.

-Since Robert Morrison's famous High Wenli version of 1823, the Bible in whole or in part has been translated into more than 30 Chinese dialects.

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