[KS] most Christian city in Asia

유게리 Gary Rector/Yu gary at korealore.com
Mon Dec 8 00:08:42 EST 2003


Dear List Members,

I vet translations (from English into Korean) of articles for
Newsweek magazine every week, and whenever there are
articles that include references to Christianity, the translators
and editors have decided that their policy is to use the word
"Gidokgyo" for Christianity in general, "Cheonjugyo" for Roman
Catholicism, "Gaesin-gyo" or just "Sin-gyo" for Protestantism,
"Jeonggyo" for the Orthodox churches, and "Seonggonghoe"
for Anglicanism. Early on, I suggested that since most Korean
readers would associate the term "Gidokgyo" with Protestantism
rather than Christianity in general, it would be better for us
to us "Geuriseudogyo" ("Geuriseudo" = "Christ") as the general
term, but I was shot down. I suspect that a lot of our readers
still think we're writing about Protestantism even when we're
actually talking about Christianity overall.

Also, in reference to Mr. Driscoll's explanation of the term
"Hananim," although the word appears to be a sort of "pun" on the word
for "one," with the added honorific "-nim," it is actually just a
variant pronunciation of the word "haneunim," from "haneul"
('heaven') plus the honorific. "Haneunim" is a traditional Korean
term that predates Christianity's introduction to Korea.

Gary Rector






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