Linguistic Sexism in the Translation of “Nashim”

This paper examines how the word, “nashim” (women), is translated in English and Korean versions of the Bible. This examination reveals three facts. First, there are three different translation stances with regard to the translation of “nashim.” Most Bible versions adopt a literal translation. When gender-neutral versions are compared with gender-emphatic versions, the former does not outnumber the latter. Second, the gender-neutral Bible versions delete the word “nashim” and supplant it with other words. Third, the women in gender-emphatic Bible versions are extraordinarily stereotyped. The attributes of the women are described with banal adjectives: “weak,” “frightened,” and “helpless.” The results from BNC, COCA, and KIKL demonstrate that the descriptions used in gender-emphatic Bible versions do not accord with modern usages of English and Korean.