2012, Vol.13, No.3

The Journal of Translation Studies 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.49

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

As part of the postgraduate course in translating and interpreting, students at Macquarie University in Australia carried out an analysis of errors found in translations by first semester students of the Translating Practice unit, from source language English into target language Korean. This article looks at the results of a part of the group analysis of empirical data which examined types of errors found in student translations to find possible reasons for such errors. The analysis found that a lack of competence in L2 (Language 2), a lack of equivalent lexical competence and simply a lack of care or negligence were all likely reasons for translation errors. An interesting point to note is that an error possibly caused by a lack of lexical competence in L1 (Language 1) was also found. This paper looks at the requirements needed to become a good translator, sheds light on lexical competence problems of training translators for the English and Korean language pair, while highlighting gaps between the two languages which potentially cause problems for translators, and emphasizing the need for translators to be aware of such gaps and possibly narrow, if not mend, them.

The present study argues that undergraduate T&I programs and the T&I community as a whole should turn their attention to serving Korean overseas adoptees, and also suggests that nurturing those who would perform dialogue interpreting, the most dominant form of interpreting in this context, may serve as a significant educational objective for undergraduate T&I programs. This paper supports these assertions by examining the history of overseas adoption in Korea, investigating what adoptees go through from their childhood to adulthood, describing my experience of supervising undergraduate T&I students interpreting for Korean overseas adoptees, looking at the difficulties interpreters face when working under this particular context, exploring the role of the interpreter as an advocate of adoptees, and discussing the implications of enabling undergraduate T&I students to interpret for adoptees. Assuming the role of a participant observer (as an organizer and liaison between my department and adoptee organizations, and as a supervisor of students), I describe the experiences of my student interpreters working for adoptees based on their accounts of what happened at interviews with TV program producers, talks with adoption agencies, searches for birth families at police stations and other public offices, and reunions with birth families. The paper concludes by emphasizing that the role of the interpreter working in this context far exceeds that of interpreters working in other fields. Interpreters who work with adoptees not only serve as aids of inter-lingual communication, but also as guides, companions, moderators, and advocates.

This article examines how Newman rewrites the Homeric original as a historical text through the practice of archaism, influenced by his time’s fascination with history. In his translation Newman approaches and reconstructs Homer’s Iliad as a history book. He intends to represent Homer’s antiquity as an ancient poet’s belonging to a barbarian age. For that purpose, he practices archaism by employing archaic words and invented words; he refuses to satisfy modern tastes. Hence, Homer’s epic is reborn as an informative historical source that provides its readership with Homer’s antiquity and historical facts about the ancient world.