àixīn

àixīn (ài·xīn loving · heart → [love] 爱心 愛心) ← Tap/click to show/hide the “flashcard”

The first part of the fruitage of the spirit listed is love.— Jiālātàishū (Jiālātài·shū Galatia · Book → [Galatians] 加拉太书 加拉太書) 5:22, 23.

While the English word “love” is often translated into Mandarin using the single morpheme “ài (love 爱 愛)”, it is also often translated into Mandarin as it is in the above-cited current Mandarin New World Translation scripture about the fruitage of the spirit, using this week’s MEotW, “àixīn (ài·xīn loving · heart → [love] 爱心 愛心)”, which literally means “loving heart”. Why is this translation often used for “love” in Mandarin? Why is it especially fitting when discussing the fruitage of the spirit?

The Mandarin culture and language correctly recognize that the heart is deeply involved in spirituality. In fact, as mentioned in Appendix A2 of the current Mandarin version of the New World Translation Bible (nwtsty), one of the expressions that the current version of the Mandarin NWT Bible uses to translate the English word “spiritual” is “xīnlíng (xīn·líng heart · spirit [→ [spiritual]] 心灵 心靈)”, which is a planned future MEotW. This expression literally means “heart spirit”.

So, it is especially fitting that the Mandarin expression chosen to translate the English word “love” in reference to the fruitage of the spirit connects both to love and to the heart.