본문 바로가기
  • Home

Norms of Translation: Translation for or against Norms

Ahn, Mi-Hyun 1

1목포대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

Norms of translation include various rules and customs that translators must necessarily acquire. Translators must learn these norms if they wish their products to be recognized and circulated in a certain society. Such products contain the preferred value and knowledge system of a certain period, such as the structure of emotion, among other things. In this network of norms inhere political, cultural, and verbal ideologies. Norms don’t operate separately, but build a network, even while they connect with or contradict each other. When translators depend excessively on dominant norms, their translations have the effect of ultimately excluding exotic factors and strengthening their own culture and language-system. We have examined such an example in Wilamowitz-Moellendorff ’s translations of ancient Greek texts: He replaces the Greek mythologies and gods by the Christianity of his time and place, and in this way reveals the national or imperial ideology of his era. Even though most translators tend to follow the ruling norms, a few translators resist these norms. We have seen such resistance in Hölderlin’s translations of Sophocles, for Hölderlin mediates new images of the Greek gods, in contrast to the images presented by other writers of his time. This art of translation transforms the fixed images of foreign culture through resistance to the ruling norms.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.