2012, Vol.13, No.1

The Journal of Translation Studies 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.49

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

In translation, the two sides of communication are the source text producer and the target text receiver, and the translator’s role is to facilitate the communication process. As such, communication is at the heart of translation. Hence, if we apply Grice’s Conversational Maxims—which set out certain conditions that facilitate communication—to translation, we will be able to come up with a useful translation guideline as well as a translation quality assessment tool. This paper aims to put forward Translation Maxims that will serve translators and translation critiques. This research first revisits Grice’s Maxims on which the author’s Translation Maxims will be built. Since translation is a “new” and unique way of communication, Translation Maxims must accommodate and reflect the unique features that are inherent in the translation process. This paper then seeks to illustrate how communication is frustrated or distorted when the translator violates each of the Translation Maxims. Also, this paper discusses what attention should be paid to avoid a breakdown in communication. The author hopes the Translation Maxims presented herein will contribute to characterizing the issues and problems in translation and to offering guidelines for those in the translation profession.

This study aims to analyze two translations of Raymond Carver’s Cathedral, one of the representative works of minimalist short stories, focusing on the stylistic feature and its effect in the source and target texts. Minimalists seldom use a flowery style of writing. Pursuing an economical efficiency in languages is a distinctive point of the stylistic features of minimalists. Known as a minimalist writer, Carver uses his typical writing style in Cathedral to manifest the character’s attitude, prejudice, view and emotional distance between characters. Writers tell through their own style of writing in their stories. Therefore, the stylistic features of the text are related to the literary characteristics of the work, and it might be essential for the translators to recognize a unique style of the source text and preserve it in the target text. Given this, this study explores the source and target text by contrast analysis focusing on the following factors: whether the target texts preserve the stylistic features of the source text; if so, how differently the translators try to show them in their translations; and what is an effect on the target text, a kind translated literature, by choosing certain translation strategies. Contrastive approach in translation studies may be considered as a simple and superficial method of studies. However, sufficient fundamental studies about translations themselves are important and needed for thorough understanding of translation, securing high quality of translation and establishing a sound culture in the field of translation evaluation and criticism. A variety of views and discussion from enough descriptive studies could pave a way to enlarge and upgrade translation studies.

A title represents a text, a play, a song, or a book that it belongs to and, therefore, influences the impression that readers or the audience form about whatever it represents. This is truer in the case of films as they have only short period to compete with each other in a given market. Hence, movie titles need to be translated such that they retain the attractiveness and informativeness that they possessed in the source language. This study analyzes 723 Korean film titles and their English translations in order to understand the kinds of translation methods used. It also discusses some considerations that we have to make when the methods are to be employed more effectively. The analysis shows that literal translation, text production, adaptation, and transliteration, in this order of popularity, are the methods chosen for the K-E translation of movie titles in the market. Although literal translation is a convenient and justifiable choice, serious consideration should be given to the naturalness of the expression. In the cases of text production and adaptation, the general trend is to reveal the plot of the movie more clearly in its English title. Expressions that are frequently used in the target language or that arouse intertextual relations in the target culture need to be investigated further to determine if they create impressions that are far-removed from the actual images and/or plots of the movies. The transliteration method, although rarely used, demands careful assessment to determine the extent to which Korean, as a lesser known language, is, and can be, accepted in the target culture.