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This paper explores the ways in which politically engaged internet users utilize translation to participate in resistant and interventionist forms of mediation in the cyberspace. By drawing on the concepts of “translation activism” and “narrative location” (Baker 2006), the present study analyzes how South Korean bloggers and internet community members engage in political participation by producing, sharing, and discussing Korean translations of a source text that resonates strongly with their own narrative location. The paper focuses on Korean translations of The Economist’s report on “Naneun Ggomsuda”, an immensely popular, but politically explosive, podcast in South Korea. Based on an analysis of 19 blogs and 9 internet cafes with posts containing translation of the original article, the paper argues that translations are produced and commented on by politically participative netizens whose personal narratives fail to align with public narratives. Engaging in translation activism in order to bring their personal narratives to bear on the public ones, the netizens translate the source text by explicitly framing and commenting on the content and positioning of the target text in terms of their own narrative location. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that the extensive use of diverse translation methods, ranging from full translation to gist or partial translation, most of which are positively received by other netizens, reveals shifting criteria regarding what constitutes quality in netizen translation. Lastly, translation occurs in connectivity and interaction in that the actual initiation, completion, reception, and sharing of translation are requested, acknowledged or supported by other netizens in posts and threads. The findings suggest that activist translation on the internet occurs in a participative format based on dynamic narrative positioning of netizen translators and shows changing expectations concerning translation quality and practice.

Two conflicting opinions exist on the footnotes among the translators. While those who are in favor of their use argue that the footnotes are essential for the complete understanding of translation, the opponents argue that they are nothing but the unnecessary comments appended to the text. Among 216 Korean literatures translated into French, a total of 1,437 footnotes appeared in 136 literatures and no footnotes in the remaining 80 literatures. This probably means that the footnotes are important to the translators who translate Korean literature into French. To know if there are certain vocabularies or contexts for which the translators use the footnotes, the footnotes were categorized according to their usage. Among 1,437 footnotes, those explaining the cultural terms were most common, seen in 877. Others included those explaining the proper nouns related to the traditional Korean holidays, the names of places, and the names of historical figures, seen in 392; those explaining the contents of the text, seen in 96; those explaining the terms derived from foreign languages, seen in 55; those either explaining the idiomatic expressions that were literally translated or showing literal translations that were liberally translated, seen in 42; those explaining the meaning of Chinese characters, seen in 15; and those explaining play on words, seen in 11. In conclusion, the translators who translate the Korean literature into French use the footnotes to help the readers better understand the literature they translate, most commonly to explain the cultural differences. Although the footnotes are not essential for the understanding of the literature translated, a substantial number of the footnotes are used to inform of Korean culture. Although the footnotes are valuable to overcome the cultural differences, however, there may be situations that should be cautious about the use of the footnotes, such as those containing the information that is completely wrong, those containing the contents that should be changed because of the periodical change, and those providing the information of the text that should be left in the hands of the readers.

This study, which finds its theoretic building blocks in polysystem theory, translator invisibility, domestication/foreignization, is aimed at exploring translator invisibility by analyzing book reviews of Please Look After Mom, an immensely acclaimed translation in the English speaking world. With regard to the polysystem theory, the present study reaffirms Even-Zohar comments that translators tend to use existing target-culture models for the TT, when translated literature occupies a secondary position in the polysystem(Even-Zohar, 2000). Put differently, a translator is likely to, or pressured to, accept the literary norms of the target-culture, which, in turn, reduces the translator to an invisible being. This study presents the following as its research findings and suggestions. First, a wide range of reviews(both domestic and international) of Please Look After Mom exhibit a marked preference and high evaluation for a fluent, transparent, smooth translation. Venuti's comments about ‘invisibility of translator’ and ‘the ethnocentric violence of translation’ seems to be born out in this study(Venuti, 1995, p. 1 & p. 16). Such a finding leads us to suggest that the domestication/foreignization is not simply a matter of personal choice on part of the translator, but rather a matter which is influenced and controlled by much bigger social factors. Secondly, this paper hopes to further stimulate academic interest in translation book reviews, as they can serve as sources to assess the general expectations and opinions towards translation in a given society. Literary reviews of Please Look After Mom largely lack comments about translation and even when such comments were offered, reviewers restricted themselves to commenting on a superficial level. It is hoped that reviewers will adopt a wider spectrum of perspectives on translation and incorporate translation theories into the practice of reviewing.

The study discusses the contribution of Liang qi-chao as a translator who played a pivotal role in the modernization of China, with an emphasis on the national translation project and its application to Korea. Three reasons for Liang qi-chao’s interest in the national translation project, contrary to other translators have been presented. First, the influence of his mentor Kang yu Wei, who stressed the need to emulate the West. Second, his view that enlightened people only can bring changes to China as the corrupt elites have no capacity to do so. Third, the admiration for the West whose advanced level of science Japan attributes her strength to. As for the national translation project, Liang qi-chao proposed four visions: establishment of translation institute, cultivation of translators, selection of books to be translated and the unification of translated words. He cited Translation Institute(譯場) as a justification of the national translation project, which conducted translation of ancient Buddhist scriptures in a systematic manner and with a success. He showed that the Translation Institute pulled it off through division of labor into translator’s notes, transcription into the target language, interpretations, comparison with the departure language, embellishment, documentation and overview. He argued that pragmatic purpose of translation should take precedence over the exactness of translation. It is essential today in the times of globalization that classics of the world and up-to-date information should be absorbed promptly and organized in a systemic national efforts if national resources are to be enlisted and reinforced. Recently, Korea has established Literature Translation Institute of Korea and Institute for the Translation of Korean Classics in an effort to support translation projects. However they are confined to globalization of Korean literatures and organization and translation of Korean classics. It amounts by no means to systematic and coherent translation project. The study points out the limitations of Korea’s national translation support projects and proposes how the project can be improved in the light of the one put forward by Liang qi-chao

Information and notice boards at tourist destinations are very important for tourists to have a comprehensive experience. This study explores the quality of such boards in Seoul to identify areas of improvement. The analysis revealed that tourist information and notice boards in English in Seoul’s major tourist attractions have quality issues of varying degrees, from minor errors in capitalization or punctuation to ones that fail to convey indirect forms of imperatives; in sum, many of the boards do not effectively perform their intended function. To rectify this issue, this study suggests some measures of improvement, such as developing guidelines for translating tourist information and notice boards and establishing a centralized check and review system under which coordinated efforts by experts in tourism content, language, and design can be made.

Simultaneous interpreting is carried out under severe time constraints as the interpreter is forced to work at Source Language speech delivery speed to process incoming oral messages into Target Language reexpression. While such mode of communication place interpreters liable to errors, it is very difficult to not only correct or repair errors when they occur, but also detect errors when they occur. The aim of this study is to analyze errors during simultaneous interpreting in order to first, find out what types of errors are most frequent during simultaneous interpreting; second, analyze how interpreters repair errors to accomplish communication; and third, analyze the implications of errors in order to propose strategies to deal with errors. For the study, authentic data was collected from an international conference hosted in Seoul. The data analysis showed omission is the most frequent type of errors during simultaneous interpreting followed by shifts in meaning and expressions. While interpreters repaired approximately ten percentage of errors, the analysis of errors showed that some omissions and shifts worked to facilitate effectiveness of communication, which was achieved by means of time saving strategies utilized by the interpreter. Although some of the time saving strategies used by interpreters seemed to violate the principle of faithfulness in interpreting, the strategies helped interpreters overcome time constraints and ease cognitive load as well as enhance the communicative relevance of Target Language expression.

This paper investigates readability strategies used in subtitle translations and, in particular, focuses on analyzing condensing and information structure alteration. Subtitling is governed by various constraints. In the audio-visual medium translation, especially movie, character’s dialogue or utterance is the main part in addressing story and plot development. And synchronizing between subtitle’s appearance on screen and the onset of speech is needed timely. Therefore, readability is the most essential factor in subtitling translation with time and space constraint. Under the temporal and spatial restrictions of subtitling, these restrictions cause target text to reduce the length of utterances. In addition, readability of subtitling could be achieved through the condensing with colloquial style, liberal translation. Alteration of information structure has three processes: the focus of new information, simplicity of meaning, the reduction of politeness. These information alteration is a kind of high readability strategy and choice of subtitling translators, including the balance between movie genre, audience level, foreignization and domestication and so on. This study concludes that readability strategy combined with condensing and information structure alteration is considered as an effective method in subtitling translation.

The aim of this paper is to analyze difference in the use of grammatical metaphor between English translations of modern Korean novels and corresponding English fictions originally written in English as part of an effort to shed light on stylistic characteristics of Korean-English literary translation. The study adopts a corpus-based quantitative analytical approach, utilizing comparable translation and English fiction corpora, each comprising approximately 1.4 million words. An analysis of four patterns of prepositional grammatical metaphor expressions shows that the translation corpus is less frequent in using the expressions in question than the English fiction corpus. The paper discusses the possible causes of the revealed differences and their implications for literary translation style.

This study explores the causes of prolonged in-sentence pauses in English into Korean simultaneous interpretation. Pauses are one of the most tangible indexes that show the efficiency of interpreters’ information processing. Since professional interpreters instinctively try to avoid long pauses in their simultaneous interpretation, prolonged in-sentence pauses in their interpretation demonstrate their processing is suffering for unknown reasons. A computer-aided analysis of English into Korean simultaneous interpretation on TV showed that most of the long in-sentence pauses were located in the first half of the interpreted Korean sentences. Original English sentences that resulted in prolonged in-sentence pauses in interpretation were syntactically more complex than those that produced no long pause sentences. The EVS/length of English sentence ratios also demonstrated that interpreters began their interpretation too early for long and complex English sentences. The results reveal that the main cause of the prolonged pauses in interpretation is impaired understanding of incoming English sentence by the interpreter. Recommendations for avoiding these pauses included adjusting EVS according to the length of original incoming sentence and producing several short target sentences instead of long ones with prolonged in-sentence pauses.

This paper purports to study Vladimir Nabokov’s approach to Translation in Lectures on Russian Literature, which consists of written-out notes for delivery as classroom lectures and several essays on literature and translation. Vladimir Nabokov is one of the great writers and translators, who represents Russian and English literature in the 20th century. His translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin is known to be an representative example of a foreignization translation strategy. Domestication is the translation strategy in which transparent style is adopted in order to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text for target text readers. Foreignization is a term used to describe the type of translation in which a target text is produced which deliberately breaks target conventions by retaining something of the foreignness of the original. Analysis of Nabokov’s approach to translation implied in Lectures on Russian Literature would reveal the reasons why he thought the foreignization strategy to be a right choice in translation of Russian literature into English.

Before teaching simultaneous interpretation, most schools of interpretation teach consecutive interpretation since the time lag allows students to fully process the source text before interpreting. One of the crucial elements of consecutive interpretation is note-taking which once mastered becomes second nature to the interpreter. The purpose of this article is to examine the notes of students to determine whether there can be ways to help students improve their note-taking skills. The notes of first year students will be analyzed to determine whether or not the way notes are taken affects the output, and if so, to help students who are struggling with their note-taking skills.

The allegedly enthusiastic acceptance of the translated Korean novel Please Look After Mom by the US and UK readership has been drawing a lot of attention from the literary circle and the translation studies academia in Korea. Reflecting this phenomenon, some even went to say that its English translation is one of the best literary translations in Korea, and that the publisher-initiated translational procedure employed in this particular translation case should be introduced as a model for future ‘outgoing’ literary translation in Korea. However, a close look at the translation immediately reveals it has many inaccurate and/or inadequate translation errors, ranging from simple lexcial choice errors to lack of proper stylistic treatment of the source text. This paper attempts to identify the translation problems embodied in this English rendition. focusing on why stylistic considerations should be emphasized in literary translation. In so doing, efforts are made to identify the translational decision-making process involving the target text publisher as well as the source text author and the translator, and show where the translator and the publisher should meet in making translation-related decisions. By way of conclusion, attentions are brought to the need to reassess and remodel the current ‘outgoing’ literary translation practice. Future research needs are also raised.

In this paper I explore the principles for translating Russian place names into Korean, especially keeping in mind the names of the federal subjects of Russia (republics, oblast’s, krajs, autonomous okrugs) and federal districts (FO). There are three problematic types: (1) the place names such that ends with -skij/skaja/skoje; (2) complex or multiple-word toponyms; and (3) “meaningful” ones. For a -skij/skaja/skoje type, the entire stem should be transliterated if there exists a city name with the suffix -sk: for example, Tomskaja oblast’ into Tomsk Oblast. Otherwise, only the root should be transliterated: Sakhalinskaja oblast’ into Sakhalin Oblast. In the case of complex toponyms, it is transliterated as a whole or restored into independent words. For example, Nizhegorodskaja oblast’ is translated into Nizhny Novogorod Oblast because Nizhegorodsk does not exist. Although it is determined whether to translate by meaning principally in accordance with the stylistic norms, there is a convention translating semantically the names of the federal districts (Juzhnyj FO into Southern FO) but transliterating phonetically the city names (Vostochnyj ‘Eastern’). The names of federal subjects and their translation is listed up at the end of the article.

With english speaking population expanding rapidly due to increasing international communication, english is no longer spoken by native speakers alone. English is spoken in different regions around the world, developing into different variants reflecting local language and culture. When speakers in an international conference speak in non-native english, interpreters, unfamiliar to such varieties, may be challenged as unfamiliarity to specific variants is more likely to present difficulties in intelligibility and comprehensibility. Previous studies indicate that conference interpreters found unfamiliar accents challenging and difficult to interpret. This paper discusses stress factors for English-Korean interpreters presented by non-native english speakers, following the concept of ‘World Englishes,’ which refers to different varieties developed around the world reflecting cultural and linguistic norms of the region or society of speakers. This paper aims to identify previous researches that point to the challenges of interpreting performance in general, and world englishes, in particular, to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing specific difficulties experienced by English-Korean conference interpreters at the level of phonology, syntax, and processing effort