Note 138a — Chapter IX · NOVEMBER 1834–SEPTEMBER 1835

Letter from Borrow to the Rev. J. Jowett, 20th Feb./4th March 1834. In his Report on Puerot’s translation, received on 23rd Sep. 1835, Borrow writes: “To translate literally, or even closely, according to the common acceptation of the term, into the Manchu language is of all impossibilities the greatest; partly from the grammatical structure of the language, and partly from the abundance of its idioms.” The lack of “some of those conjunctions generally considered as indispensable” was one of the chief difficulties.