This paper aims to investigate the New Korean Revised Version (1998) in terms of Korean linguistics. The purpose of this study is to examine some of the erroneous translations found in NKRV based on Korean linguistic aspects and lay the foundation to publish a better version of NKRV, which would provide a friendly access to its text and satisfy modern readers.
The study comprises three major aspects, i.e. morpho-syntactic, semantic, and orthographic aspects with the results as follows:
First, archaic and modern sentences are morpho-syntactically confounded, which needs to be unified. If they are unified to archaic sentences, each word ought to comply with lexical rules. Along with it, the ultra-honorific imperative ending, ‘-소서’ needs to parallel the honorific prefinal ending, and the humble prefinal ending. In other words, it should read as ‘-시옵소서’. In addition, these forms ought to comply with honorific rules. To take ‘예수’ for an example, the honorific subject case ending, ‘께서’ needs to be rewritten as ‘예수님’. Since Jesus deserves to be honored, the honorific subject case ending, ‘님’ ought to be affixed to ‘예수.’ Thus, ‘예수님’ is preferable. The second personal pronoun, ‘당신’ has no implication of honor and must not be affixed together with the honorific subject case ending. Thus, ‘나’ and ‘우리’ must be replaced with ‘저’ and ‘저희’ in accordance with the rule of humbleness. Furthermore, ‘이르되’ which means ‘to say’ can not be used toward senior hearers. The vocative case ending ‘-여’ is not used in modern times, and ‘랍비여’ and ‘주님’ ought to be changed to ‘선생님’ and ‘주님.’ Differences in the usage of particles ought to be recognized. As for quantitative expressions, ‘한 무화과 나무’ ought to be rewritten as ‘무화과 나무 한 그루.’ The noun formational ending, ‘음’ or ‘기’ conjoined with dependent nouns needs to be replaced with ‘-는 것’ to make sentences more natural.
Secondly, in view of semantics, Chinese characters which are difficult to decode need to be changed to easy Chinese or native vocabulary in spite of translators’ efforts in many ways. Words representing ‘time’ need to be changed to a proper one to enable modern readers to comprehend. Words signifying ‘the disabled’ need to be changed to appropriate ones so that they will not evoke unpleasant feelings. In addition, alternative translation is required as a means of preventing confusion from the use of homonyms. ‘자’ needs to be changed to ‘사람’ or ‘이’ in compliance with semantic change. Lexical selection requires prudence in cases such as ‘외식’ and ‘변형’, which need to be replaced with ‘가식’ and ‘변모’.
Finally, it seems extremely erroneous in terms of orthography that punctuation marks are not used at all. Legitimate (Appropriate) punctuation is required for modern readers if appropriate forms are necessary. Small letters are helpful to understand some vocabulary. However, there are minimal mistakes in word spacing despite meticulous proofreading.