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영어

This is a comparative study of the Chinese original text of The True Origin of All Things (萬物眞原) and its Russian translation Истинный источник всех тварей или Книга о истинном источнике. Penned by Italian Jesuit missionary Aleni in 1628, this doctrinal treatise employs Western medieval theology, Aristotle's natural science, and Western scientific philosophy to demonstrate the formation of heaven and earth and the existence of God. Widely influential from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the book underwent translations into various languages during this period, including Manchurian, Mongolian, and Korean. Notably, the Russian translation in 1791 by Agafonov, a student at the Russian Spiritual Mission in Beijing, remains the sole Western language edition in existence. Delving into such a rare historical text, this study analyzes concepts expressed in Eastern languages by Westerners and their subsequent translations. With reference to Korean-Russian translations, this study investigates aspects of Chinese translations into Russian, across themes of history, concepts, and religion, with the aim of pinpointing instances of paraphrasing and mistranslation, and generating data for cross-linguistic research. This multifaceted study is the first of its kind in Korea, and will serve as a valuable resource for terminology used in Chinese-Russian translation.