Earticle

This paper discusses the importance of explicating culturally induced contextual information in Korean into English literary translation. Korean is characterized by a high context culture while English characterized by a low context culture. This creates difficulty for translators when they deal with contextual or cultural sub-textual information in literary texts. In order to bridge the gaps in contextual background between the readers of source and target cultures translators must employ explicating strategies that are not always successful. In this paper the author investigated three translations of Korean modern literature. In most cases contextual information was successfully delivered by adding explicit explanation however sub-textual information was more difficult to convey as it required access to deeper level cultural information.

The aim of this study is to address issues in the Korean translations of Chanson de Roland, the most typical chanson de geste in French literature. After comparing the original Chanson de Roland to its translations through a review of the translation texts, explanations, and translators’ notes, I propose a new approach to translating western medieval literature. In carrying out this research, I examine the current status of Korean translations of Chanson de Roland, the translators’ interpretations of the text, the main translation strategies, and the translated texts themselves. I also investigate the major translation characteristics required for the rendering of Chanson de Roland into Korean. In addition, I point out that the prestige attached to Chanson de Roland is not only due to literary reasons, but to the political background of modern Europe. Furthermore, I assess the challenges of translating medieval French literature by presenting interpretation errors in two Korean translations of this work. I conclude that we must abandon older methods and adopt a radically different approach to the Korean translation of western medieval literature, or even of ancient works. To this end, the translation of such works should develop into a form of literary research that transcends the mere rendering of texts into Korean.

The objective of this paper is to examine how food names are translated between Korean and Chinese and the major strategies that are applied, describing patterns of translation in both language directions, from Chinese to Korean and from Korean to Chinese. Based on the linguistic-cultural characteristics of each language, the patterns of translation in both directions were compared and the norms for translation of food names between Korean and Chinese were identified. Korea and China both belong to the cultural sphere that uses Chinese characters but have very different writing systems. The Chinese writing system is an ideographic system where the characters are symbols representative of a particular meaning, whereas the Korean writing system, Hangeul, is a phonetic system. The linguistic-cultural characteristics of each writing system lead to unique patterns in the translation of food names. This paper hence compares the patterns of translation of food names in Korean to Chinese and Chinese to Korean to gain the following results. First, phonographic translation is the strategy used for Chinese to Korean translation of food names, but in Korean to Chinese translation the strategy used is semantic translation based on the linguistic-cultural characteristics of Chinese characters, with the original pronunciation written down in English. Second, the two major norms of translation identified were the translator’s use of subjectivity and domestication using native elements in the culture of the target language.

The purpose of this study is to introduce audiovisual translation as an effective teaching material for helping students achieve the basic understanding of the process of achieving equivalence in translation. This study identifies types/categories of translation where deverbalization and reformulation can be effectively utilized, shows how challenges in translating can be resolved through deverbalization and reformulation, and provides evidence that audiovisual translation is an effective training tool for students to utilize deverbalization and reformulation as a translation strategy. The results of the study show that the use of deverbalization and reformulation strategies can yield high-quality translation during audiovisual translation. The strategies were especially effective in the following areas: words/idioms, character relationship, sentence conversion /structural adjustment, cultural/historical background, domestification, addition, understanding context and humor. Through the use of audiovisual translation as a learning material, students are expected to better grasp the concept of deverbalization and reformulation and extend these strategies in other types of translation material.

The Great East Japan Earthquake, which occurred on March 11, 2011, resulted in a great many victims, not only Japanese nationals but also a large number of non-Japanese members of Japanese society. As part of the support activities targeted at these people from other countries, the Center for Multilingual Multicultural Education and Research (CEMMER), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, began providing them with multi-language information support (in a total of 22 different languages) in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The purpose of this paper is firstly to provide an outline of the general conditions of non-Japanese victims in the disaster area and secondly to describe the system by which CEMMER has been carrying out its multi-language translation support activities, together with the specific activities it has undertaken. Providing foreign nationals with the support they need in the event of a disaster requires not only comprehensive knowledge about administration, medical care, legal affairs, and education, which is often vital to acting as a community interpreter, but also the skills and techniques necessary to communicate information appropriately. CEMMER places the greatest emphasis on ensuring SPEED and ACCURACY in its translation support activities. However, it can only achieve these by utilizing the experience that it accumulates on an everyday basis regarding knowledge and technological expertise, and by using the coordination capabilities required to make effective use of this experience.

Poil de Carotte (Hongdangmou in Korean) is generally recognized as a children’s story, but it is in fact an autobiographical novel of the writer, Jules Renard, based on his childhood memories of being unloved by his mother. This novel includes several episodes inappropriate for child readers, as it features a boy hero who suffers abuse from his mother and who turns to abusing small animals. Therefore, the adaptation of this novel into a children’s story requires translation strategies aimed at reducing the cruelty and violence of the original text. This study examines the appropriateness of translation strategies adopted to protect the emotions of child readers while teaching proper language. Such translation strategies include the purification or the simplification of meaning and the omission of syntax. This study also suggests improvements for the translation of a children’s version of Poil de Carotte by focusing on the tone of characters and the literary styles of this novel, including the use of euphemism and repetition. Comparisons are made between child-reader and adult-reader translations published in the 2000s.

Objective of the present study is to analyze how the SSCCS(Same Shaped Chinese Characters of Synonym)-words with the same shape and meaning in both Japanese and Korean-are translated into Korean, with consideration of their readability. For analysis of translation of the SSCCS, a comparative analysis was conducted in parallel for the translated text . In other words, with consideration of the same source text(ST), the two target texts(TT) were comparatively analyzed. For the analyzed texts, six TTs were compared with three STs. With one ST, a minimum of as many as 1500 same shaped Sino-Japanese words with synonym for Korean words were extracted and data for comparison of ST and TT were typed in Excel 2003 to be classified according to translation strategies. According to this, translation strategies for the SSCCS were classified into 1) translation in same form, 2) partial alteration into an equivalent form 3) translation into a different form, and 4) omission. The analysis results indicated that regardless of original text, time period, and translator, “translation in the same form” was the dominant strategy, followed by “translation into a different form”, “partial alteration into an equivalent form”, and “omission”. With this as a main subject, a survey was conducted to investigate its readability. As a result of survey, a high ratio of translation in the same form as the original was shown to have an adverse effect on the readability.

The paper will consider, based on existing literature and the author’s own experience, how sight translation (ST) can be incorporated into simultaneous interpreter training classes. ST is the rendering orally of a text written in one language into another language. This approach is used regularly by conference interpreters, including the author, to prepare for actual conference interpreting assignments. It can also be employed as a training tool, as discussed by Viaggio, S (1995) and Weber, W (1990). Having become aware of the real potential of using ST inside and outside of the classroom, and based on the work of the two interpreting trainers mentioned above, the Conference Interpreting Program at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) is now actively using ST for both English-to-Japanese and Japanese-to-English interpreting training. There are two possible approaches to using sight translation in such classes at TUFS: (1) the use of only the text, or (2) the use of the text together with an audio of the actual rendition of the text. Adoption of both approaches in her graduate-level (M.A.) second-year simultaneous interpreting class has convinced the author that the utilization of ST in simultaneous interpreting classes can teach students to be time and effort-effective. That, however, is provided that the following caveats are observed: (1) the need to find most efficient words in expression is met; (2) word-for-word translations are strictly avoided; and, (3) the focus of the exercise is on the content of the message. Since in ST training the coordination and management of constrained resources are crucial factors, it is essential for students to learn how and where to employ their limited resources to achieve optimal performance.

This paper starts from a question: why do this researcher try not to use Korean pronoun ‘keunyo’(which corresponds to ‘she’ of English) when translating? To answer the question this paper reviewed the pronoun’s origin, usages in present Korean. ‘keunyo’ appeared for translating western third-person female pronouns in the early 20th century. However, it couldn’t become the fully-qualified third-person pronoun and now functions as a stylistic device, accompanying various constraints. In this regard English pronoun ‘she’ cannot be replaced with ‘keunyo’ automatically and this researcher’s aversion to ‘keunyo’ is explained to a certain degree. Also, this paper poses a possibility that this researcher’s lifelong linguistic exposure to the pronoun has influenced on the aversion. This paper finishes up with translation strategies to avoid the pronoun ‘keunyo’.

Inadequate interpreting services and the lack of interpreting in various languages during the interview of asylum seekers have been criticized, but interpreting services in the process of interviewing asylum seekers at the Ministry of Justice and the following appeal process at the Administrative Court have not been subject to investigation by interpreting researchers. This paper is a first attempt to examine the quality of interpreting during asylum appeal hearings in Korea based on the analysis of the discourse of court interpreting and courtroom observation. The findings indicate that interpreting, provided by untrained non-professional interpreters, often deviate from the norm of accurate and impartial interpreting, which is vital in legal interpreting. Based on such findings, this paper argues for the court and the judiciary to pay attention to the improvement of the quality of interpreting through interpreter training and proper legal interpreter system.

Since the late 20th century, corpus-based studies have become a general method of investigation in modern linguistics. A corpus (monolingual or multilingual corpus) permits the linguists to explore the real linguistic data used by a speech community. However most of the studies focus on the high-frequency words in a corpus, whereas the low-frequency words are excluded from the subject of the analysis. The low-frequency words also consist of a corpus; therefore they are important linguistic elements as much as the high-frequency words. The purpose of this paper is to look into translation equivalences between the low-frequency words in a parallel corpus, a French Novel Moderato Cantabile, and two Korean translations, the Moderato Corpus. For the purpose of researching the translation phenomenon of low-frequency words in the Moderato Corpus, this paper uses the quantitative methods of lexical frequency, co-occurrence and contextual exploration. The result of these analyses demonstrates that the low-frequency nouns have different translational situations as much as the high-frequency ones. Surprisingly, they have also a definitive equivalence between the French word and the Korean word. Therefore, this study contends that low-frequency words can contribute to translation studies and, especially, enhance the automatic translation machine as a translation reference.