Translating Korean Heart Music into English Songs for Worship

Many Calvin Symposium on Worship attendees experience the joy of singing in many languages at the symposium worship services, vespers, and sessions. They often describe it as “a taste of heaven” or “a Revelation 7:9 moment.” Singing another culture’s or another generation’s heart songs often feels like a gift.

An emerging early initiative to translate contemporary Korean worship songs into English promises to bless Korean Christians around the world, especially in churches where older Christians prefer Korean and younger ones prefer English. These bilingual songs can also help congregations that are mainly Anglo, English-speaking, multilingual, and/or multicultural to understand and receive the gifts of Korean Christian spirituality.

“Translation is not just a mirror reflection of the original text but a fruit of inspiration that can even enlighten and enrich the original text,” says Chan Gyu Jang, a resource development specialist for web-based liturgical resources at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is also director of music at Woodlawn Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. Jang has presented on and led Korean hymns and contemporary worship songs at The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and at the annual Calvin Symposium on Worship.

Exploring the worship music landscape in Korea provides context for understanding the textual and musical challenges of creating bilingual Korean English songs. So far, the initiative is yielding fruitful questions and collaborations that will eventually result in a bilingual songbook.

Worship music landscape in Korea

Confucian scholars and Yi Su-gwang, a Korean politician, learned of and introduced Catholicism to Korea in the early 1600s. They encountered the faith in China through books written by Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary to China. For the next two centuries, Korean royalty variously banned, welcomed, or killed Catholic missionaries and laypeople.

In the late 1800s, as Korea became more open to the world, Seo Sang-ryun established Korea’s first Protestant church. He wrote an article for an English-language missions journal inviting Protestant missionaries from the U.S. to come. Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, and other Protestants responded.

Christianity grew gradually in Korea until 1945 and soared after World War II ended the Japanese occupation of Korea.

“Korea had a strong tradition of singing, such as folk and labor songs at home, work, and festivals. They sang court music for ancestor worship,” Jang says. “The love for song was already in Korean hearts and bodies. Western missionaries introduced their music culture of organ, piano, choirs, hymnals, and four-part harmony. Journal articles in The Korean Mission Field described how the Korean and English languages work so differently.

“These differences made translating English hymns into Korean as challenging as it is for us now to translate songs by Korean composers into English songs that flow and are singable. Missionaries put impressive time and effort into helping Koreans sing the missionaries’ heart songs in Korean. I think of our current project as returning the favor.”

He explains that Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists published a unified hymnal still used in most Korean congregations in South Korea and abroad. Besides traditional worship services, many congregations also offer a contemporary service with CCLI music in Korean and some contemporary songs by Korean writers. Korean Anglicans and Korean Catholics have their own hymnals.

“When I was 12,” Jang says, “my parents were called to serve a non-denominational church of Korean immigrants in China. There I learned to speak English and Chinese. Since the 1970s and especially since the 1990s, Korean composers began writing contemporary worship songs. I grew up listening to and singing these songs that we keep in our hearts as precious treasures. I learned them on audio recordings and CDs and led them in my high school youth group in China. These songs were very close to me. Since we now have our own Korean heart songs, why not share them with English speakers?

“In these songs,” Jang explains, “you sing with your eyes closed, imagining the intimate presence of God in your heart. You look inward, raise your hands, and may cry out when you pray or sing. These kinds of songs—basically melody and chords, not four-part harmony—are mainly sung at weekday or youth group services or before formal Sunday worship. Some of the older songs have entered into traditional Korean Sunday worship services as well.”

“In these songs, you sing with your eyes closed, imagining the intimate presence of God in your heart. You look inward, raise your hands, and may cry out when you pray or sing.

Text translation challenges and process

Several musicians have attempted to curate and translate Korean heart songs into English. Jang wants to “uphold and refine their desire and vision.” He is co-managing a project that builds on these attempts in partnership with the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, GIA Publications, Inc., and contemporary Christian songwriters in the U.S.

Jang explains that it’s arguably easier to translate Spanish songs into English than to translate Korean songs. Spanish and English use the same alphabet and have similar grammatical and poetic forms. But Korean and English have big differences in syllabic stress and poetic structure. “Korean has different vowels and hard consonants that English doesn’t have, like double d’s and double s’s. English has consonants that we don’t have, like l’s, r’s, and v’s,” he says.

English poetic meters depend on patterns of stressing or accenting certain syllables. The Korean language is generally unstressed. Instead, it has rules that guide whether a speaker should pitch a given syllable low or high. Direct translations from Korean to English combined with the original song rhythm may result in language that feels forced or unnatural.

For example, Korean composer Seong-Sil Chung wrote a song based on Psalm 121. “The Lord Is Your Protector,” a direct translation of that song, accents the second syllable in evil (e-vil instead of evil). That’s why translating Korean songs in English requires not just translating but also versifying, Jang explains. Also, the Korean language doesn’t use articles like an or the.

“As a bilingual speaker,” Jang says, “I notate the music and provide English translations to versifiers, most of whom do not speak Korean. I translate line by line, word by word—literal translation, not dynamic translation. Versifiers [paraphrasers] then take my translations and fit them into the melody, aligning syllables with notes so that the words are singable. The goal of both translation and versification is to capture the meaning of the original text as accurately as possible.” The songs Jang translates generally list the versifier as the translator.

Adam M. L. Tice, GIA’s editor for congregational song, versified “The Lord Is Your Protector” as “In the Shade of God.” Jang says that Tice’s version “departs from the original text in structure, [but] not meaning.” Instead of starting with “The Lord is your protector, the Lord is your shade on your right hand,” Tice starts with “In the shade of God who watches over you.” He also adds rhymes in phrases ending in night and light. “When the melody has a pattern, it’s very satisfying to also have rhyme,” Jang notes.

Density, meaning, and syncopation

Another big difference between Korean and English is that English tends to be denser, so English needs fewer syllables to say the same thing. That results in translators/versifiers either having to repeat phrases or fill in gaps to have enough syllables to match the musical notes in the original Korean songs.

Jang notes that density difference offers opportunities to add meaning while translating Korean worship songs to English. For a song based on a psalm, scripture, or prayer, translators can use other images, words, or themes from those passages to add to or deepen the song’s meaning.

A good example is a text from the Korean version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, set to music in 1994 by Sunlac Noh. In 2023, Martin Tel used the same tune to create an English version called “Joo-yeo, Come, O Lord.” The first two lines in the original Korean take only eight syllables in English: “O Lord, come; lead us to your grace.” To add meaning, Tel used remaining notes to include four biblical titles for God. In Korean, Joo-yeo means O Lord, and Grisdo-yeo means O Christ. Emmanuel in Hebrew means God with us, and Maranatha in Aramaic means Come, Lord.

Along with providing direct translation, Jang explains the meaning of Korean terms that have no English equivalents. Martin Tel versified a Korean song by Sun-kyung Jeong and Jin-young Soh. Its chorus expresses the words of Isaiah 61:3. “That verse in the Bible has a phrase variously translated as ‘beauty for ashes,’ ‘garland for ashes,’ and ‘crown of beauty instead of ashes,’” Jang says. “The original Korean song text says, ‘wreath of flowers’ instead of ashes.’

“The wreath of flowers is a thing in Korean culture,” he explains. “Before Christianity came to Korea, women would wear wreaths of flowers as part of a formal dress for non-religious ceremonies such as weddings and public receptions. So Martin Tel’s ‘God of My Help’ includes ‘Gold turns to dust, vain treasures to ashes; flowers will fade, but your love knows no end.’”

Fitting dynamic English translations into Korean tunes sometimes requires simplifying the music. “Koreans grow up singing lots of complex, syncopated songs, so [they] are generally better at tricky rhythms than most native English speakers are,” Jang says. “Many of these songs are published with only melody, words, and chords. If you are a Korean pianist, you are expected to be able to play from a lead sheet. Our project makes a hospitable move to reduce syncopation without giving up the rhythms of original Korean tunes.”

Fruitful questions, collaborations, and next steps

This emerging initiative to translate contemporary Korean heart songs to English is yielding fruitful questions and collaborations.

In thinking about how to make this a fruitful project, Jang says he keeps pondering three questions:

• “How can our songs be a unifying force between Korean generations and ecumenically? When it comes to Christian faith, Koreans tend to look to the West and not to the East, not to the treasures of our own people. Some worshipers don’t see these contemporary songs as having as much weight as translated English songs so don’t want them sung within Sunday worship services. What makes Korean songs unique and beautiful? How can we better share their beauty among us and people around the globe?”
• “How can I turn my weakness into opportunity? I haven’t lived in South Korea since I was twelve. My formative time as a worship leader was in English as a student at Calvin University. But maybe that can help me see a given contemporary Korean worship song objectively without rejecting or filtering where it came from so others can be attentive to the song’s beauty.”
• “What is deeply personal that is universal? Christians in every culture want to praise and worship God. Yet so far there’s been no ecumenical movement in Korea. Can this pioneering project help unify Protestant, Anglican, and Catholic denominations?”

Since before the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained attention to this emerging initiative has led to fruitful collaborations with the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship GIA Publications, Inc., and contemporary songwriters connected to CICW, GIA, The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, The Porter’s Gate Worship Project, and more. Martin Tel, Joyce Borger (CICW), and Becky Snippe (CICW) are working on the project with Chan Gyu Jang.

“Our first CICW consultation in October 2024 included both bilingual and English-only participants,” Jang says. “It confirmed for us the benefit of having native Korean speakers working with English speakers to create singable versifications of Korean translations. The collaborative spirit and energy from that consultation continues today, resulting in newly written texts. We hope this project will foster a coalition of first and second-generation Korean worship leaders. Together, they will ponder and navigate ways to promote unity among different generations by creating opportunities to sing the heart songs of Korean people in their own languages.”

In 2025 or 2026, GIA Publications, Inc. will begin publishing single songs as part of its Unbound series. Eventually, project managers hope to release a bilingual songbook of at least fifty such songs so people can sing in Korean or English alone or simultaneously. The audience will include Korean American and Korean immigrant churches in the U.S., universities and seminaries in the U.S. that host 40,000 Korean international students annually, Korean missionaries in more than 160 countries, especially those sharing the gospel with English speakers, and churches in mainland South Korea, especially as the country welcomes immigrants from around the world.