2007, Vol.8, No.2

The Journal of Translation Studies 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.49

pISSN : 1229-795X
https://journal.kci.go.kr/kats

Translation of Wordplays in AliceKim, Soonyoung (Dongguk University)Puns or wordplays present the trickiest difficulties for translators so much so that people often refer to them as "untranslatable." This paper does not deal with the long-standing arguments on the dichotomy between translatability and untranslatablity of puns or wordplays. Instead, the main focus is observing how the puns or wordplays in source texts are reproduced in target texts through the mediation of translators. In order to situate the research into perspective, I begin with the review of previous studies. For theoretical background, I examine Delabastita (1996) and adopt his classification of puns and pun translation homonymy, homophony, homography, and paronymy.Then six Korean translations of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland are examined for their treatment of puns. The texts included three translations done for children and three for adults. They were also selected according to publication date and span the period from the earliest to most recent texts. Of the four different types of pun proposed by Delabastita, I focus on the translation of homonymy and homophony, which were most widely used in the source text. As a result of the analysis, three different ways of translating puns were found. The analysis shows that the mediating strategy or translation strategy is decided by the purpose of the target texts.

Translation of Abridged and Itemized TextsRyu, Hyunju (Pusan University of Foreign Studies)This paper explores an abridged and itemized text(AIT hereafter) in light of translation. AIT mainly comprises a special writing style called "Gaejosik" in Korean which is a coined term of Gaejo(items)Sik(style). This refers to a writing style of listing items or expressing more with less number of words, in other words, pursuing economy of language while retaining the same meaning. This abridged style can effectively help contain more information in those texts that have space limit such as powerpoint images, advertisements, web pages, manuals and catalogs. In terms of translation and interpretation, language proficiency and professional skills are a must but a style writing commensurate with a target text purpose is significantly important as well. AIT is different from other general writing in that abridgement and ellipsis/ommission play positively and sentence restructuring occurs more often. In the mean time, Korean language speakers are not used to paraphrasing and in turn have difficulty in translating/shortening descriptive detailed information into abridged text with clear meaning. The rising demand on AIT and linguistic and cultural differences of writing between the two working languages necessitate raising awareness of this AIT issue and integrate its characteristics into general pedagogy of translation & interpretation.

Translation-related Problems in Government Institutions - Survey Results and Analysis Shin, Jisun(Ewha Womans University)Recent years have seen an increase in the demand for translation services in the public sector in Korea. The situation has created new challenges to ensure high-quality translation with the lack of professional translators in this field. This project was designed to diagnose the structural problems of translation services in the public sector and figure out how to address the situation. The data were gathered from a questionnaire survey on 38 local authorities. The major sectors chosen for a survey to analyze the problems are culture and tourism, arts and Korean Studies. The findings show some areas of concern that need to be addressed, such as the standards and quality of overall translation, the absence of systematic evaluation process, and the need to build national database of standardized terminology for consistent translation. The data also found few authorities go through appropriate editing process required to ensure the quality of translation. Most importantly, most of the public sectors are in dire need of truly professional translators who are capable of offering not just solid language skills but also in-depth subject knowledge. In that regard, many of those surveyed suggested the establishment of government organization to provide high quality translation services for the public sector.