2012, Vol.13, No.2

The Journal of Translation Studies 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.49

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

An increasing number of general readers of translated texts assume the role of translation critics in the internet age. The ascendancy of reader-critics was brought by the enhancement of cultural and linguistic capabilities of readers, an environment allowing an easy access to foreign culture, and the development of telecommunications and internet enabling people to easily distribute their opinions on the web. In this kind of social atmosphere, mega best sellers such as Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, and Steve Jobs in Korea as well as in other Asian countries were criticized for their low quality of translation and the lack of proper editing by many reader-critics in the past decade. Comparing the source text and the target text, they catalogue mistakes and errors made by translators—judgements made only by scholars or professional critics in the past. This paper conducted a research on the critical comments posted on the web by translation readers. This kind of comparative criticism by readers has shortcomings as it considers the source text sacred while puts the target text in the lower and submissive position and berates translators as incompetent or ignorant. But, the expansion of readers' role has brought a new era where not just scholars, publishing companies, and policy makers but readers can affect how the translation is done.

This study aims to identify the notions postgraduate learners have on translation and observe how learners and teachers communicate in the classroom. Although the difference in one’s notion of translation will significantly affect the translation process and eventually the translation s/he produces, there has been a lack of discussion on this in the translation classroom. In particular, teachers and students have different notions of what translation is and, thus, do not share the same understanding on a given translation situation or a translation product. Naturally, this negatively affects the final translation products students produce as well as sets a ceiling as to what teachers and students can achieve in the classroom. To identify the notions students have on translation, ten learners were subjected to this study and divided into two groups. Each group was given a translation task with a different translation purpose—“translation pedagogy (professional translation according to Deisle 2002, 229)" and “pedagogical translation”—in order to identify what translation strategies learners use depending on a given translation purpose. For every translation assignment, students were instructed to submit translation briefs detailing the target readership, target text-type (or medium), translation purpose as well as the translation problems they identified along with the solutions they came up with. Based on their description, it was explored whether there were differences on their translation notion and whether such differences, if any, affected their translations. After the first assignment was completed, a second assignment was given to the students for which the translation purpose was switched between the two groups. In other words, the group that first worked on “translation pedagogy” switched to pedagogical translation, and vice versa. The analysis reveals that the translation briefs drawn up by students is a useful tool to better understand translation learners. The study also shows that producing different translations based on the same source text with different translation purposes can enhance student understanding of the translator’s role. Finally, having students practise translation by reflecting what has been discussed in the previous class helps the teacher identify whether the students have learned and, therefore, enables deeper understanding on the communication process in the translation classroom.

Poil de Carotte (Hongdangmou in Korean), generally known as a children’s story, is a French autobiographical novel of the writer, Jules Renard, based on childhood memories of being unloved by his mother. The focus of some episodes of this novel is not only on the mother who abuses her son, but also on the violent child who cruelly kills small animals. These episodes in Poil de Carotte, call for a caveat as to their suitability for a children’s story. If one considers that one purpose of children’s literature is the protection of children’s emotions and if propriety in language teaching for child readers must be observed, then some translation strategies must be employed to relieve the cruelty and violence of the original text to make Poil de Carotte an appropriate novel for children. In this study, we examined the diachrony of the translation methods in the Korean versions of Poil de Carotte by comparing the past and present versions published from the 1970s until the 2000s. We investigated if this diachrony was in accordance with the features appropriate for the target readers by comparing adult and child versions. Finally, we examined its readability and its suitability for child readers, from an educational perspective, by focusing on the tense of narration, the tone of the character portrayal, and the clarity of euphemisms in the translated versions.