The Dictionary in question represents a first attempt to build up a lexicon which would consist of translations from Russian into Chinese of the key terms and concepts related to the Services of the Russian Orthodox Church and the spiritual practice of the faithful. It is directed primarily toward those Chinese who would like to acquire some idea about Orthodoxy in general and the Orthodox Service in Russia in particular. It is quite clear that without having this basic knowledge it is not just impossible to make one's decision about receiving Holy Baptism and participating in the Church life in Russia but is not possible either to involve oneself into study of Russian culture, and especially do translations of texts that do not have necessarily ecclesiastical context.
Notwithstanding the modest size, this Dictionary involves a large spectrum of vocabulary: in it are included the names of the Orthodox Services and Feasts, the Sacraments of the Church, the basic Service books, hymns and prayers, the holy vessels and priestly vestments, definitions of concepts related to the understanding of sins and virtues etc. In most cases necessary explanations are given clarifying the sense of the concepts in question.
In this lexicon its place have found words from the Holy Scripture often used in the Orthodox practice, words from prayers and hymns, as well as names of a large number of saints and theologians with accompanying short commentaries.
Compiling this sort of Dictionary showed itself to be a painstaking endeavor not only due to the lack of precise equivalents in the Chinese language, the unusualness of the corresponding vocabulary and its saturation with Buddhist terminology, but also owing to the different methodology used by the specialists during the course of translation of the necessary concepts. Above all, we strived to choose such a translation solution which wouldn't corrupt the meaning and at the same time would be understandable to the contemporary Chinese speaker that doesn't have specific theological education. Unfortunately, translations into Chinese done by Russian missionaries at the beginning of the last century for the most part do not correspond to our goal due to their incomprehensiveness to the contemporary Chinese. There are also some other translations known to us that were done from English (but the English "original" also suffered from large number of errors). The possibility that occurred of having translations from Greek done by Chinese born specialists is obviously a welcomed step forward, although, according to our opinion, this could only partially achieve our set objective of finding Russian-Chinese corresponding words. For resolving this problem a whole team of specialists needed to be involved. The first steps were done with the help of Professor Zhang Baichun (PRC), and during the ensuing work, Peter Adamek (SVD) and Professor Zbignew Veselovski (Poland) from Fu Jen Roman Catholic University in Taiwan also took part - without their informal assistance it is hard to imagine that the dictionary would have been brought to the next step where a serious help was performed by the Greek translator Ioannis Chen, who is a student at the Theological Faculty of the University of Thessaloniki (Greece). It is important to note that, besides the clarification of terms and replacement of "obsolete" vocabulary, the Polish experts have given us a substantial assistance in the translation of personal names (in the Dictionary several variants are given, thus facilitating the understanding for those who are already familiar with the existing Bible translations done by representatives of different Christian denominations) and citations from the Holy Scripture. The Greek translator (Chinese by birth) has given a substantial contribution in the explanatory section of the Dictionary and also helped with the clarification of a whole roll of terms whose meaning is differently perceived in Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions. I am using this occasion to express my gratitude to the employees of the Calendar department of the Publishing council of the Russian Orthodox Church and especially to Alexander Vladimirovich Shishkin for making the corrections in the Russian part of the Dictionary. At the end, during the final stage of the work, the Dictionary was completely proofread and corrections were made for the fifth time with the help of Chen Yiting - graduate student at the Faculty of Russian language of Chengchi University (Taipei), who has chosen translation of Service texts of the Russian Orthodox Church as the research subject of her Master's Degree thesis.
An unceasing prayer support and organizational help the compiler of this Dictionary continues to receive from Priest Dionisy Pozdyaev (The Orthodox Brotherhood of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Hong Kong).
As a first edition of the sort, it is almost impossible for this Dictionary not have some crucial shortcomings. Hence, all remarks will be accepted with gratitude and taken into consideration during the preparation of the next issue of the Dictionary which is planed to be larger and more complete than the present one.
M. V. Rumyantseva, 2006 (Institute of African and Asian Studies of Moscow State University, Moscow - National Chengchi University, Taipei)