The Thomas Jefferson Center (President Lee Jong-kwon) has published an English commentary on the U.S. Declaration of Independence titled “A Decent Respect: Line by Line A Korean Approach to the Declaration of Independence” to mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
Since 2022, the Thomas Jefferson Center has been publishing Korean-language books promoting the Declaration of Independence and the founding spirit every year on July 4; this is the fifth book in the series and the first in English. President Lee Jong-kwon stated, “As an 18th-century prose text, the Declaration of Independence features surprisingly difficult and complex sentences, making it common for even Americans to struggle to understand the text.” He added, “While many existing commentaries have merely summarized or paraphrased the content, this book aims to reconstruct the logical structure, historical context, and philosophical significance of the Declaration of Independence by analyzing each sentence individually.”
This book compiles the content of online lectures conducted at the Thomas Jefferson Center. Each chapter follows a structure consisting of Original Text, Discussion, Reflection, and Comparative Translations. Every sentence in the text is explained line by line, and accurate translations were achieved through linguistic, historical, and philosophical reflection. CEO Lee explained, “In this process, the translation not only achieved natural Korean but also preserved and reproduced the structure, logic, philosophy, and tone of the original text.
This fact was verified through AI-driven backtranslation and synchronization rates across different fields.” The verified translation demonstrates the potential for the Declaration of Independence to be used as a source code for new translations into all languages.
A source code refers to the role of a master key that enables the form and content of the Declaration of Independence to be transferred to any language. The theory posits that if the structure of the original text remains intact in the translation, it can be reproduced without distortion in a third language through AI that transcends language barriers; this book successfully applied this theory to Spanish.
The next book, currently being written as a follow-up (*A Decent Respect: 250 Years Later – The Declaration of Independence Across Languages*), will present the principles, theories, experiments, and results of translating the Declaration of Independence into languages worldwide, based on the new translation theory established in the first volume.
CEO Lee stated, “The meaning of the Declaration of Independence was surprisingly not widely known due to its demanding and complex archaic 18th-century language and the multi-semantic systems of its terms.” He added, “Through ongoing translation experiments, we have already succeeded in translating it into about 10 languages, and we are currently working on translating the Declaration of Independence with a goal of translating it into 108 languages in the future.”