본문 바로가기
  • Home

A Study on Translation of Newspaper Comic Strips from English into Korean: Focused on Humor Translation

  • The Journal of Translation Studies
  • Abbr : JTS
  • 2018, 19(2), pp.253-276
  • DOI : 10.15749/jts.2018.19.2.010
  • Publisher : The Korean Association for Translation Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Interpretation and Translation Studies
  • Received : May 13, 2018
  • Accepted : June 15, 2018
  • Published : June 30, 2018

Lee, Hyun-kyung 1

1경희대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Comic strips have been enjoyed almost for a century by people all over the world. One of the main causes of its popularity is the 'fun' people get when they read comic strips. Two main constituents of fun in the comic strips are ‘satire’ and ‘humor’, produced in harmony with iconic images and written expressions. Among the comic strips, this study analyzes 4-panel strips which are usually seen on newspapers and mostly deal with current issues in a rather sarcastic way. And humor is mostly expressed in the punch-lines usually applied in the last panel. What makes 4-cut newspaper comic strips different from other forms of comics is that they contain enormous amount of information on the social, political and cultural content of source text culture, which makes translators feel insurmountable the translation of 4-panel comic strips into target languages. Translation of social, political and cultural items has been known to be difficult to do, but in case of 4-panel comic strips it is all the more difficult with their limited spaces given on each panel and speech ballon, while conveying the same effect of humor and sarcasm at the same time. This study identifies types of humor translation of 4-panel comic strips of English into Korean on the translation of two groups of students; undergraduate students taking Translation Theories and Practice and graduate students at a Interpretation and Translation Graduate School. Based on the results of the data, strategies of humor translation are sought to better reach the skopos of humor. The results will provide future guidelines in teaching students on how to translate humor in comic strips.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.