2022, Vol.23, No.3

The Journal of Translation Studies 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 1.49

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

This article aims to explore motives and characteristics of the Canadian missionary translator James Scarth Gale’s (1863-1937) retranslation of The Story of Choonyang in 1913, focusing on his source text selection. Unlike Horace Newton Allen’s (1858-1932) first translation in 1889, allegedly a highly influential translation at the time, Gale chose Yi Haejo’s Okjoonghwa as his source text. Based on Gale’s personal trajectory and characteristics of his source text and translation, this paper explores motives of his retranslation, as to why Gale chose Okjoonghwa and how his perspectives and attitudes are represented in translation. I argue that Gale chose Okjoonghwa because the story centered on a heroine, Choonyang, unlike Allen’s source, and described Choonyang as a noble class, yangban. I also argue that the way in which Gale formulates the translation is in line with his favorable attitude toward Korean women and a ‘dancing girl’, gisaeng.

Kobal has drawn attention as a novel by a writer who is known to live in North Korea, and has been translated in 28 countries to date. Kobal offers an attractive example to examine paratextual transformations in its translations; it has multiple paratextual elements to choose from in translation, particularly in terms of its political ideology; and it has been translated into many languages. According to a previous study of the text’s paratextual transformations, in some translations in the West, anti-North Korea ideology was mitigated; a neutral view between South and North Korea was attempted; and Bandi’s identity was questioned. These versions seem to be translated from the perspective of an outside observer of the situation in North Korea. On the other hand, translations in countries surrounding the Korean Peninsula, directly subject to North Korea’s threat of war, may take a different view. Against this background, this study demonstrates how political ideology is reflected in the paratexts of Kobal’s translations in countries surrounding the Korean Peninsula vis-a-vis some translations in the West as discussed in the previous study. While there are no Chinese or Russian translations, paratexts of Japanese and Taiwanese translations have fully conveyed the source text ideology. The analysis supports the claim that political ideology is a major factor in translation, from determining whether to translate the text to transforming paratextual elements. This paper thus demonstrates a spectrum of ideological reception, through paratexts, in multiple translations with different socio-cultural backgrounds.

The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare the ironic clues in three Korean translations of “The Black Cat” and “The Tell-tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. Irony is a phenomenon in which the meanings of what is said and what is intended are contrasted. The ironic clues in the two works include fronting, inversion, meiosis, litotes, repetition and punctuation. Fronting and inversion contribute to the expression of the narrator’s logic and reason, and repetition and punctuation contribute to the expression of excitement and intense emotions. Meiosis and litotes reinforce ironic effect by expressing important events as if they were nothing. Inversion rather than fronting is not reflected well in the translations, because, due to the nature of Korean, an adjective can not be inverted like in English. Since the inverted sentence has a function of emphasis, there is a way to translate it into an adverb. Although the repetitive forms of ‘very, very’ appear several times in STs, none of them are translated in three kinds of TTs. It appears that more natural or normative expressions are preferred rather than exaggerated expressions. In order to interpretively resemble the original text, it is appropriate to sufficiently reflect each of these communicative clues in translated texts. This is because these communicative clues, or ironic clues, produce ironic effect in the literary texts.