KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study is to examine the source of the phrase yaya hacin i jemengge ci colgororo, . . . ('[give us today the] excellent [one] above all kinds of food') in the paternoster of the Manchu Bible translated by Father Louis de Poirot, S. J. De Poirot's translation is interesting because it is quite different from the usual ones in most other languages, which says '(give us today our) daily (bread).'The base for de Poirot's translation is the Vulgate Latin Bible. In this Bible, the phrase has been found by the present study to appear in two different words: as 'supersubstantialem' in Matthew, and 'quotidianum' in Luke. These two words have been turned out to be variant translations of the Greek , a rare word which has been used only in the phrase of the paternoster. Importantly, the former means roughly 'above all substance(s),' and the latter means something like 'daily.'The conclusion is that the source of de Poirot's phrase in the Manchu paternoster must be the Latin 'supersubstantialem' in Matthew, which was translated into Manchu as 'excellent, above all the substances,' with the word 'substances' taken as 'subsistence' or 'food.' The source for our usual 'daily' type translation in the paternosters of most other languages then must be the Latin 'quotidianum' in Luke.

Following Park Young Chul who dedicated to the translation of German poems, Yoon Tae Woong was an excellent translator of the 1940's. Yoon's efforts encouraged the introduction and translation of German literature into Korean, and thus enriched Korean poetry. Yoon's translations must have gone through the same treatment as Park's in that he had to rely on German-Japanese and German-English dictionaries since German-Korean dictionaries were yet not published. However, he had advantages over Park because he could work on the basis of Park's contributions introducing Rilke's theories of lyric poems. Since Yoon majored in English literature, the possibility that he referred to English editions is high, although to date there exists no substantial proof. His detailed efforts to keep the original intact and to translate as faithfully as possible are to be seen throughout his translations. Some of them not only satisfy modern standards but also exceed contemporary versions of translation. His achievements as translator deserve fair and proper evaluation and need to be studied more deeply. Only after that, the history of Korean literary translation in the 1940's can be truly understood.

The purpose of this study is to propose a translational norm in terms of "speakability". The significance of speakability must be recognized in translating children's literature, which is often intended for reading aloud. The authors writing books for children fully understand how reading aloud affects children both emotionally and linguistically. Translating stories for oral rendition is particularly important for children who cannot yet read. Translators, however, do not seem to be aware of this as much as authors do, which necessitates the establishment of the speakability norm in translating children's literature.In order to propose the translational norm, the present essay analyzed twenty English picture books to read aloud, their Korean translations and twenty authentic Korean picture books. Due to phonological differences between English and Korean, the translators employed an unique method to improve the speakability of the target text: the use of Euisung-uh(onomatopoeia) and Euitae-uh(mimesis), the symbolic words imitating sound, movement, shape, state, etc. Korean has a great number of Euisung-uh and Euitae-uh giving readers a pleasant auditive impression through a rhythmic repetition of syllables and words. Consequently, their active use in children's literature is widely recommended in Korea to appeal to listening children. Euisung-uh and Euitae-uh were abundant in authentic Korean picture books, but not in translated children's books. English does not have as many symbolic words as Korean, which leads to the infrequent use of those words in the translations. Accordingly, a translational strategy using many Euisung-uh and Euitae-uh in translating children's literature would be conducive to improving speakability in translation.

This study shows that English passive constructions should be translated into Korean based on the functions that they perform in a given text. In English to Korean translation, the English passive has long been recognized as one of the difficult elements and has received great attention from translators and researchers. However, this attention has mainly focused on the forms of the passive rather than its textual functions, as well as on ad hoc solutions without systematic analysis. Working with information structure theory and text linguistics, the present study first shows that the functions of the English passive can be expressed in forms other than the passive in Korean. Then, it presents how this knowledge of the differences between the two languages can be applied to translation through the analysis of several existing examples. From the analysis, it is concluded that the textual functions of the English passive should be the first and foremost consideration when translating them into Korean. It is also a necessary to distinguish the long passive, which contains the agent expressed in a by-phrase, from the short passive without a 'by + agent' phrase since they perform very different textual functions. The findings of this research are not just limited to translation. They also have implications for the general English and Korean education.

Using a small parallel corpus of student and professional translations, this paper examines the phenomenon of explicitation in texts translated from English into Korean. It discusses previous studies on the notion of explicitation and provides a brief description of the software tool and data to be analyzed. Based on the assumption that student and professional texts differ and that the degree of difference depends on the type of explicitation, it further attempts to examine the different levels of explicitation in texts produced by both student translators and a professional translator. This paper adopts the classification of explicitation provided by Klaudy (2001). Of the four types of explicitation, obligatory, optional, pragmatic, and translation-inherent, this paper focuses on obligatory and pragmatic ones. The data used here are authentic data obtained from translation classes from a graduate school and from a professional translator. The paper focuses on the translation of three free modifier phrases in student and professional translations for the potential traces of obligatory explicitation. For the analysis of pragmatic explicitation, the paper focuses on two metonyms containing cultural information and one cultural expression. The findings support the evidence of explicitation as one of the common features of translated texts both in student and professional translations. In terms of the different level of explicitation, however, it is hard to make any generalization as only one professional translation is used while there are twenty student translations. Obtaining more than one commissioned, professional translation is virtually impossible for a non-literary text as only one is needed for publication. For greater reliability, in the future, it might be worthwhile to have more translations done simply to use them in analysis.

In this article, I have discussed how a translation must be "coherent" (Vermeer 1996) within the context of the target reader. This coherence is achieved by the "awareness of receivers' assumptions and expectations" (Mason 2000:16).In order to illustrate this rather nebulous idea of reader assumptions and expectations, we have adopted the useful concept of frames. As to the interactional aspect of frames, I have seen that the interactonal distance (Lee 1996) between interactants (that is, the news writer and news readers) is established differently in the ST and TT. While the English source texts, in the present study, make frequent use of solidarity-creating expressions, the Korean target texts resort to distance-maintaining markers. This leads us to suggest that different interactional frames are brought into play in the ST and the TT. Accordingly, the claim has been made that the translator is required to skillfully adjust these varying interactional distances. This claim should constitute the heart of audience design espoused by many scholars including Bell (1991) in the field of the news and Mason (2002) in the branch of translation.I have also suggested that this variance in interactive frames is closely related to differing textual rituals governing the ST and the TT. These textual rituals are something that have been acquired and reinforced by the text producer through his or her previous encounters with texts in the same genre and same discourse community. Consequently, the concept of intertextuality is a universal consideration that the translator should pay heed to in the translation of any genre, of which the news genre represents one example.

Translating poetry is a challenging task because it must take into account linguistic and cultural differences between the source language and the target languages. This paper examines John Donne's "Elegy 19: To His Mistris Going to Bed" by exploring the linguistic difficulties involved in translation, especially in grammatical categories such as word order, number, article, and preposition as well as cultural difficulties, particularly in lexis, such as culture-specific words, metaphors, and collocations. This paper suggests a suitable translation strategy to satisfy Korean readers, considering the three main translation approaches: literal translation, free translation, and an eclectic approach that connects the two extremes. Given the cultural and linguistic differences between the two languages and the idealized target readers seeking an intimate knowledge of English poetry, an eclectic translation method combining both literal and free translation seems most suitable in translating "Elegy 19" into Korean. Chang Jun Lee, translator of the target text, clearly attempts both a literal translation when dealing with the cultural aspects of words insofar as the bounds that Korean grammar allows, and a free translation with respect to grammatical categories, for the sake of the content. He thereby achieves results that allow the reader to follow the target text smoothly, though with a slightly alien impression.