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Translation of Language Variation Characterized in Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller

Han, Miae 1

1동국대학교

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ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the source and the target text of Comfort Woman in terms of language variation which is divided into register and dialect. Halliday (1978) suggests that dialect is a variety of language according to the users, and register is a variety of language according to the uses: field, tenor and mode of discourse. Two first-person narrators and a character in the source text use language distinctively depending on the situations and the social status. However, their language uses are not distinguished in the target text. The first reason is that the present point of view is obscure since some of the present tenses connected with field and tenor of discourse are translated into the past tense. The second is that deviant free direct speech linked to mode of discourse is rendered into normal direct speech, and the comfort woman story of Akiko is not foregrounded. The third is that immigrant language and antilanguage, which is one of social dialects and "a language of social conflict" (Halliday 1978: 185), are changed into the standard language in the target text. Since language variation depending on the users and the uses is related to vivid character developments, a stylistic feature, and ethnic identity of Korean-American narrators, it should be represented in the translated text through the translator's mediating role.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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