2013, Vol.14, No.1

The Journal of Translation Studies 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.49

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

Translating children’s picture book is a complex and dynamic activity, as it deals with a non-conventional text type which involves both words and graphic devices. In other words, children’s picture book is a type of iconotext in which two individual text components－words and illustrations－complement and react with each other and form a new and dynamic text. Of course, this exceptional nature of the genre provides dynamism as well as hardship to the process of translation, as the target text will have to re-balance the relationship and interaction of the two major text constituents. This paper purports to expand the current literature on the translation of children’s picture book by examining it in the framework of iconotext. It will explore the multi-dimensional and multi-faceted relations between words and illustrations and examine how such devices contribute to forming a completed text and to delivering message in an effective manner. With a clear understanding of the iconocity of the children’s picture book, this paper then seeks to stress the need to adjust or domesticate source text illustrations in the process of translation. Examples of domesticated illustrations will be presented and their roles and contributions will be studied. In addition, non-domesticated illustrations－but which should have been domesticated indeed－will also be presented, so as to show the non-equivalence and incompleteness of text caused by lack of efforts to re-balance the target words and illustrations. It is of notable interest that only the words have received attention in the translation practice as well as in the translation studies. The author hopes the research will contribute to triggering further discussion on the translation of children’s picture book from the iconotext perspective.

This paper aims at elucidating what size of corpus can produce the reliable qualitative analyses when the parallel corpus, composed of English original and Korean translated texts, is used. To reach the goal, we have divided the size of corpus into 5 levels from a quarter-million to one million (phonological) words. At each level, the number of words has been increased by one hundred fifty thousand words, i.e., 250,000, 400,000, 550,000, 700,000, 850,000, and 1,000,000 words. Then, we have examined the major differences between the levels. The results obtained from our investigation are as follows:First, with reference to the translation source of the Korean bound noun ttaemun(reason or ground), the zero-morph translation is most frequent in a quarter-million corpus level, while the frequency of the conjunctive translation is the highest in the seven hundred thousand corpus level. This indicates that at least, the corpus size of seven hundred thousand words is necessary to get a meaningful analysis of the bound noun ttaemun. Second, although the differences between the five levels are not significant, the translation of the long-form causative construction becomes more frequent in the seven hundred thousand corpus level while the frequency of the text-free translation decreases more or less. Third, in the case of the translation source of the Korean conjunctive geureona(but), the translation frequency of conjunctive ‘but’ increases by 20 percent in the four hundred thousand corpus level while the translation of either zero morph or conjunctive ‘however’ decreases by 10 percent in the same corpus level. On the other hand, in the case of the Korean conjunctive hajiman(yet or but), certain significant change of translation frequency occurs in the five hundred fifty thousand corpus level. Finally, concerning the translation of the English dash mark ‘-’ into Korean, the five hundred fifty corpus level shows a significant result. For example, the dash mark disappears in many Korean texts, or the contents after the dash mark is rewritten as a new Korean sentence. In conclusion, the reasonable size of corpus, which can be developed into a hypothesis or theory, can vary from four hundred thousand words minimally to seven hundred thousand words maximally according to our investigation. Futhermore, the corpus size over seven hundred thousand words does not make any difference on the qualitative analyses of the 4 items thoroughly investigated in this paper.

It is an important task for the translator how to translate specialized terms in specialized texts such as medical volumes or legal documents. For example, the translator has to choose the translation style whether to translate into familiar and general terms such as ‘mad cow disease,’ or into difficult technical terms such as ‘BSE.’ Indeed, at the online Japanese translation site of the 3 large daily newspaper in Korea, the translator chooses a different style for the text under the same ‘translation brief’ such as an article translated into (TT) ‘mad cow disease(ST)’ à and an article into ‘BSE’ (牛海綿状脳症) (TT). Even at the legal document, the translator must decide whether to translate into ‘liable spouse’ or ‘liable spouse (a spouse liable to the failure of marriage)’ a style common people can understand easily. Like this, the translator comes to intervene in the translation either consciously or unconsciously. Mossop explains the intervention by the translator as 3 ‘voices’ as follow. That is, ‘my voice’ à ‘Neutralizing’ (the voice of the translator), ‘your voice’ à ‘Ventriloquizing’ (the voice of readers) and ‘her voice’ à ‘Distancing’ (the voice of SL author). This paper aims at analyzing and stating the Japanese-Korean translation of the legal text translated by the students of Korea University of Foreign Language Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation in the translation courses on the basis of 3 ‘voices’ of Mossop. Especially, we will review how ‘the voices (translation styles)’ designed by the students change as to the legal text in detail from the view of the voice theory mentioned above.