알렉산더 피터스의 한글 개역 구약 개정 작업 -“구약 개정에 대한 노트”(1940년)를 중심으로- (Alexander Pieters’ Revising Work for the Korean Revised Version (1938))

서지정보

· 발행기관 : (재)대한성서공회 성경번역연구소
· 수록지 정보 : 성경원문연구 / 22호 / 48 ~ 72페이지
· 저자명 : 이환진

초록

Alexander A. Pieters’ article, “Notes on Old Testament Revision”, published in May 1940 in The Korea Mission Field (pp. 78-80) is fascinating in that it reveals us how to translate the Korean Revised Version of the Bible (1938). In the article he offered us precious information about the translation team members, translation rule and method. Even though he took his project as a revising work of the former Bible, Korean Old Translation(1911), his work can be called a new translation because his team worked with the original Hebrew Bible. The Korean Old Translation of the Bible is said to be a translation of an English Bible.
According to him, the members of the project are W. R. Reynolds, Yi Won-Mo, and Alexander A. Pieters himself. They tried to translate the Hebrew Bible as literal as possible. When making a textual decision, they followed the opinion of the majority among the translators, as many other Bible translation teams did.
One of the most important contributions to understanding of the term “Hananim”(하나님) for “God” in Korean would be the fact that the word derived from “heaven.” Pieters mentioned in his article that it means “honorable heaven” (p. 79). His idea about the term is close to that of J. Ross, the first translator of the Korean Bible. As a matter of fact, nowadays Korean Christians think that “Hananim” literally refers to one God because “Hana” means “one” in Korean and “-nim” is attached to it for expressing honor or respect. The idea, however, does not seem to make sense because any numeral in Korean cannot be adorned by an ending of respect or so.
The difficulties encountered by Pieters’ translation team were how to translate the passive voice of Hebrew verbs and the Hebrew verbal forms of the third person into Korean. The two verbal forms are rarely used or never used in Korean. For the latter case they adopted the formula of “cause to do” (하게 하오), and for the former, at times they created a passive. We get the answer from this statement why the literary style of the Korean Revised Version is not so natural to read. Compared to the Korean Revised Version, the newer Korean Bibles such as the Korean Common Translation (1977) and the Revised New Korean Standard Version (2001) are full of more natural expressions because they are the works of Koreans who tried to avoid awkward expressions as much as possible.
In spite of the weakness of the translation of the Korea Revised Version, the enormous effort of Pieters’ translation team should be honored and fully appreciated. What is more, his article on the revision of the Hebrew Bible fills the gap of the history of Korean Bible translation. It does clearly reveal us the unknown facet of the process of the translation of the Old Testament of the Korean Revised Version. All in all, the Korean Revised Version of the Bible should be called as a new translation, rather than a revision.

영어초록

Alexander A. Pieters’ article, “Notes on Old Testament Revision”, published in May 1940 in The Korea Mission Field (pp. 78-80) is fascinating in that it reveals us how to translate the Korean Revised Version of the Bible (1938). In the article he offered us precious information about the translation team members, translation rule and method. Even though he took his project as a revising work of the former Bible, Korean Old Translation(1911), his work can be called a new translation because his team worked with the original Hebrew Bible. The Korean Old Translation of the Bible is said to be a translation of an English Bible.
According to him, the members of the project are W. R. Reynolds, Yi Won-Mo, and Alexander A. Pieters himself. They tried to translate the Hebrew Bible as literal as possible. When making a textual decision, they followed the opinion of the majority among the translators, as many other Bible translation teams did.
One of the most important contributions to understanding of the term “Hananim”(하나님) for “God” in Korean would be the fact that the word derived from “heaven.” Pieters mentioned in his article that it means “honorable heaven” (p. 79). His idea about the term is close to that of J. Ross, the first translator of the Korean Bible. As a matter of fact, nowadays Korean Christians think that “Hananim” literally refers to one God because “Hana” means “one” in Korean and “-nim” is attached to it for expressing honor or respect. The idea, however, does not seem to make sense because any numeral in Korean cannot be adorned by an ending of respect or so.
The difficulties encountered by Pieters’ translation team were how to translate the passive voice of Hebrew verbs and the Hebrew verbal forms of the third person into Korean. The two verbal forms are rarely used or never used in Korean. For the latter case they adopted the formula of “cause to do” (하게 하오), and for the former, at times they created a passive. We get the answer from this statement why the literary style of the Korean Revised Version is not so natural to read. Compared to the Korean Revised Version, the newer Korean Bibles such as the Korean Common Translation (1977) and the Revised New Korean Standard Version (2001) are full of more natural expressions because they are the works of Koreans who tried to avoid awkward expressions as much as possible.
In spite of the weakness of the translation of the Korea Revised Version, the enormous effort of Pieters’ translation team should be honored and fully appreciated. What is more, his article on the revision of the Hebrew Bible fills the gap of the history of Korean Bible translation. It does clearly reveal us the unknown facet of the process of the translation of the Old Testament of the Korean Revised Version. All in all, the Korean Revised Version of the Bible should be called as a new translation, rather than a revision.

참고자료

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