Bible Translations

Definition and Meaning

A Bible translation is a Bible in which the Old Testament, written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and the New Testament, written in Greek, have been rendered into another language. Korean translations are commonly called the "Hangul Bible" (Korean-language Bible). There are two broad approaches to translation. Formal equivalence (literal translation) seeks to preserve the words and word order of the original as closely as possible. Dynamic equivalence (free translation) renders the meaning of the original so that present-day readers can understand it naturally. Because each translation balances these two approaches differently, the same passage may be worded differently from one version to another.

Historical Background

• In 1882, the Scottish missionary John Ross, working in Manchuria with Korean collaborators, published the Gospel of Luke. This work led to a complete New Testament in 1887.
• A translation of the Gospel of Mark by Yi Su-jeong, who was living in Japan, is said to have been brought into Korea by Horace Underwood and Henry Appenzeller when they arrived in 1885.
• A translation committee of missionaries in Korea published the New Testament in 1900 and the complete Bible, including the Old Testament, in 1911. A revision of this work, known as the Korean Revised Version (Gaeyeok), appeared in 1938.
• In 1961, the Korean Revised Version (Hangul Edition) was published, revised to conform to standard Korean orthography.
• In 1977, the Common Translation Bible, translated jointly by Protestant and Catholic scholars, was published.
• In 1993, the Korean Bible Society published the Korean Standard Version, a translation in contemporary Korean. Following later revisions, it is now known as the New Korean Standard Version.
• In 1998, the New Korean Revised Version was published. It retained the framework of the Korean Revised Version (Hangul Edition) while revising archaic and discriminatory expressions; for example, the term mundungbyeong (a pejorative word for leprosy) was replaced with nabyeong (leprosy).
• Private publishers have also issued contemporary-language translations such as the Easy Bible, the Korean Living Bible, and the Woorimal Bible.

Practice in Korean Churches

• Today most Protestant denominations use the New Korean Revised Version in Sunday worship and from the pulpit. Combined editions binding the Bible and the hymnal in a single volume are widely distributed.
• Some churches and believers continue to use the Korean Revised Version (Hangul Edition), either out of familiarity or because they disagree with certain renderings in the New Korean Revised Version.
• Some editions of the Common Translation include the deuterocanonical books (Apocrypha), which are not part of the Protestant canon. The translation also differs from Protestant versions in rendering the word for God as Haneunim rather than Hananim. For these reasons, and because it was produced jointly with the Catholic Church, some conservative churches have been reluctant to use it in worship. By contrast, the Anglican Church of Korea is known to have used the Common Translation in its liturgy.
• The Catholic Church uses as its official translation The Holy Bible (Seonggyeong), published in 2005 by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea.
• Outside of worship, in personal reading through the Bible, quiet time, new member classes, and Sunday school instruction, contemporary translations such as the New Korean Standard Version or the Easy Bible are often read alongside other versions to compare their meaning.