A Translating Experience

Printer-friendly version

by the Korean Translator

In the fall of 1976, I discovered The URANTIA Book in a bookstore in Pittsburgh, and immediately became an avid reader. After about ten readings, I desired to share it with the people of my native land. I wrote the URANTIA Foundation and told them I wanted to translate The URANTIA Book into Korean. In June of 1993, I received approval to do so, and my wife and I started translating immediately.

We did the translation in three stages. In the first stage, we translated The URANTIA Book, which took three years. In the second stage, we checked the translation to make sure it was "true to the original text." (It is surprising how often we neglected to translate a word or even a sentence.) And finally, in the third stage (we're in the third stage now), we are editing and polishing the verified text. My wife serves as my sounding board; she checks rough spots, and she is of tremendous help, especially when we debate the relative merits of alternative translations of a given text.

South Korea has a population of forty-two million. Fifteen million are Christians. North Korea has a population of twenty million, but very few Christians have survived.

South Korea sends more Christian missionaries to other parts of the world than any other country. Koreans are a fervent people. I believe that they are hungry for spiritual truth, and that they will readily accept The URANTIA Book and its teachings. Once completed, a Korean version of The URANTIA Book would sweep the entire Korean peninsula, and someday Korea might even serve as the new Salem in Asia.

Early Christians made many compromises to render the gospel more palatable to the peoples of the Mediterranean world. It took about nineteen centuries for the gospel to penetrate the Asian continent, and the distorted and diluted truth became less palatable to the Asian nations. It was not well-received. Except in Korea, the gospel of Jesus has had little impact on Asia. Three and a half billion Asians are sitting in theological darkness, persisting in ancestral worship. Asia is the last spiritual frontier on Urantia! We need to provide Asians with badly needed spiritual nutrients. The teachings of The URANTIA Book may be just the spiritual fertilizer that the religious soil of Asia needs.