The purpose of this article is to introduce consistency checks needed in the process of Bible translation, to assess the quality of some published Korean Bible versions by examining them with selected consistency items, and to suggest the need of revising the versions by applying thorough consistency checks so that Korean churches can have Bibles of better quality.
The process of consistency checks in Bible translation is a part of reproducing the nature of the original biblical text into the translated text. The original biblical text is characterized by its intertextuality comprising a linguistic cohesion and a thematic coherence. That linguistic cohesion is realized by the many terms and phrases as cohesion features that are used consistently throughout the whole Bible. It is as if the Bible is woven into a masterful piece of fabric with intertextual strings of cohesion across the Hebrew OT and the Greek NT. Some linguistic and literary features of the original text, such as the acrostic nature of some psalms, are virtually impossible to translate into another language. Some other features, however, are possible to reproduce in translation. Among the reproducible features is the domain of consistency items although checking them takes highly technical efforts over a considerable length of time.
Korean churches have strived to have a good Bible translation in Korean, and that effort produced several versions in recent years. But as yet, none of these versions has reached the stature of the Korean Revised Version (1961) as the “Church Bible”. This means there is a need to supply a version of high quality to Korean Christians. One channel to upgrade the quality of translation is to apply thorough and technical consistency checks.
Here, general consistency items are introduced first, then some selected consistency items are experimentally applied to six recently published Korean versions: the New Korean Revised Version (1998), the Revised New Korean Standard Version (2006), the Agape Easy Bible (2004), the Duranno Korean Bible (2005), the Korean Truthful Version (2008), and the CBCK Bible of the Roman Catholic Church (2005). In addition, four foreign language versions are examined with the same items: The English Revised Standard Version (1952), the German Lutherbibel (1984), the Chinese Union Version (1919), and the Turkish Kutsal Kitap (2002).
The result of this examination shows that the Korean Bible versions are found largely lacking thorough consistency checks. In comparison, the four foreign language versions are more carefully done in this respect. It is not to say that the Korean versions are of poor quality but that they lack a professional finishing touch. Thus, thorough consistency checks remain the desiderata for most Korean Bible versions.