Christianizing Sim Ch’ŏng chŏn: James Scarth Gale’s Translation Stylistics as Reflected in his Retranslation

This article examines how James Scarth Gale (1863–1937), one of the most influential Presbyterian missionary translators in early-modern Korea, Christianized The Story of Sim Chung [Sim Ch’ŏng chŏn] (1919). To do this, it compares his translation with the first English translation, produced in 1889 by Horace Newton Allen (1858–1932), the first American Presbyterian missionary in Korea. The paper argues that Gale adopted a Christian-oriented concept and ideology, often eliding the Buddhist and Taoist references in the source text. It further posits that the Christian notions in his translation are typical of Gale, but that the more sophisticated translation choices in The Story of Sim Chung represent the evolving character of his translation stylistics and differ from his previous translations, such as The Life of the Buddha (1915).