After thorough revisions by members of the Han-Ca presbyteries, a church doctrine subcommittee and a publisher in Korea, a Korean version of Living Faith is expected to come before General Assembly later this month.
Translating involves discerning what the original author intended to convey, and then conveying it as accurately as possible to Korean-speakers in Canada, said Rev. Wally Hong, who did extensive work on the document as a member of the committee on church doctrine. Although they are similar, there are some significant differences between the Korean spoken in Korea and the Korean spoken in Canada.
“For instance, in Living Faith 1.2 there is a statement ‘God has come to us.’ In English, the meaning of the phrase ‘has come’ is precise. It denotes the present tense yet shows how the present is built on the past, and Koreans who have lived in Canada for some time would have a clear sense of what ‘has come’ means. In Korea, ‘has come’ looks forward to the future even though it refers to the past and the present. In a way, it could easily be translated to suggest that God is ‘still’ to come, and less that God has ‘already’ come. In this sense, the team that worked on it had to really study what Living Faith really says to Koreans living in Canada.”
