우리말 초기 「시편」 번역본들(『시편촬요』[1898], 『셩경젼셔』[1911])과 『개역』(1938)의 대본 문제와 번역 특징 및 그 수용 과정에 대한 기초 연구

Abstract

As the Korean Church as a whole and the Korean Bible Society in particular are celebrating the centennial anniversary of the first publication of the Complete Bible in Korean (1911) this year, it seems very appropriate to look back on the history of our Bible translations and evaluate the qualities of each version and revision published in the nascent periods of translation (from 1898 to 1938 in this paper). So far, Korean biblical scholars are divided into two major camps in their understanding of the source text of The Old Testament in Korean (1911) and The Revised Version of Korean Translation of the Old Testament (1938) - one argues that even though it is a highly complicated matter, early translators must have wrestled with the original text of the Hebrew Bible; however, the other argues that they used English versions such as The Revised Version (RV, Oxford and Cambridge University, 1887) of the KJV (1611) and the American Standard Version (ASV, 1911) together with a couple of Chinese versions such as the Wenli Reference Bible (Delegates Version, 1804), Bridgman and Culbertson"s Version (1864), Schereschewsky’s Easy Wenli Bible (1902 [based on his translation in 1875]). This paper aims to discuss this agelong issue of the source text by analyzing two major texts in Psalms intensively with special reference to the translators" understanding of the Hebrew words, phrases and syntax. The present writer concludes that the first Korean translations of the Psalms by Alexander A. Pieters betrays some evidences which show that he has struggled with the Hebrew text in several passages and that he has also been in contact with the Chinese versions available in his time. With regard to the qualities of Korean translations in terms of their choice of the most suitable and common words and phrases in excellent ways, Pieters" translations could be highly evaluated even at this period. We can safely conclude that his translations were basically followed by Underwood"s translation of the Psalms (1906, 1911) even though we should acknowledge that Underwood endeavored and made his own efforts by referencing the Chinese versions and his own understanding of the received Hebrew text. We may count it as an irony of history that Pieters was appointed as one of the members responsible for the revision of The Complete Bible in Korean, against or in accordance with the will of Underwood of which we know little. At any rate, he as the reviser of Underwood"s translation of Psalms, sometimes recovered his first translations (1898), while at other times he accepted Underwood"s translations and eventually finished his job successfully (1938). As for the styles of writing, Pieters and Underwood preferred to use Korean terms and its literary style as much as possible during the early stages; however, in later works by Pieters and The Revised Version of Korean Translation of the Old Testament (1938), many Korean terms were replaced with the Chinese ones, which may reflect the literary taste of the time. One final suggestion to improve the literary style of the present New Revision of the Revised Version of Korean Translation of the Old Testament (1998) is that its style would be far better if the poetic texts are to be rearranged according to the basic design of the Hebrew poetic text, namely, in terms of parallelism.