Earticle

This paper starts from questioning whether it is appropriate to describe a newly emerging group of user-translators as “non-professionals” just because they do not receive formal training in translation. Unlike traditional non-professional translators, these volunteer translators participating in translation of webtoons, free open-source softwares(FOSS), games, educational contents, news articles and subtitles for dramas, have domain knowledge and high level of digital proficiency. They work online in collaboration with other like-minded people with the help of computer aided translation tools and hold online discussion forums on translation related topics. In commercialized cases, quality control and evaluation are done through peer-reviews, voting, and revision by professionals. Through collaboration, discussions, usage of CAT tools and division of works, their lack of professional competence is compensated. With a dramatic increase in the volume of online contents which need linguistic mediation, these volunteers contribute a lot in helping people enjoy the cultural and intellectual contents over language barriers. Considering the strength of these translators characterized by strong interest, genre knowledge, online collaboration, digital literacy, and language proficiency, the term “non-professional” referring to these volunteer translators is not quite appropriate; and the traditional concept of professionalism in the translation community largely based on translation education needs to be reevaluated.

The present study aims to explore how metaphors in proverbs are translated from Korean into English and identify effective and preferred translation strategies theoreof. A total of 344 Korean and English proverbs were compared with a view to tracking the respective numbers of occurrences of metaphors and identifying different types of metaphors employed. The major findings of this study are as follows. First, the proportion of the metaphors in proverbs that are translated as others is much higher than expected in the literature, which can probably be attributed to the genre of the texts compared: proverbs. Second, the types of the metaphors that are dominant in Korean proverbs and their English translations are different. While orientational metaphors are dominant in Korean, ontological metaphors are prevalent in English. These findings show that metaphors in proverbs tend to be preserved throughout the translation process as much as possible, and that the specific types of metaphors, however, vary reflecting the specific characteristics of the languages involved. This is related to the nature of metaphors, which are universality and peculiarity. Metaphors are universal, which is why metaphors in proverbs are mostly translated. However, metaphors are also peculiar, which is why there are language-specific metaphor translation strategies.

This study analyzed cases of interpreting service failures and identified types of claims filed at each stage of interpreting process. At the pre-process, a 35% of service failures had occurred mainly due to clients' confusion over interpreting dates or language pairs, or refusing to pay penalty for service cancellation. In the in-process, a 53% of claims had been filed for use of wrong terminologies, omissions or errors in interpreted contents, etc. The remaining 12% of service failures had taken place in the post-process. To prevent interpreting service failures, clients need to participate in service process by offering information in advance on interpreting to be performed and opinions on interpreter selection. Clients' participation could be more effectively induced, if it is specified in an interpreting service agreement as responsibilities of clients. At the same time, requesting such information from clients should be stated as interpreters’ responsibilities. When a service failure occurs despite such efforts, the claim should be handled in a manner that ensures fairness both for clients and interpreters. In addition, service failures possibly caused by clients' confusion could be prevented with the use of preparation poka yoke, a quality management tool.

Humor serves an important function in communication - by easing tension, maintaining concentration of the listeners, facilitating the message delivery to name a few. Increasingly, interpreters are called upon to mediate humor at international conferences which may be a formidable challenge that entails transferring of disparate linguistic and sociocultural elements in a way that successfully evokes an equivalent playful response. Using simultaneous mode of interpreting, in particular, humor may be a challenge for interpreters who need to strategically allocate available cognitive efforts to carry out different tasks all at once. This research investigates the types of humor encountered by interpreters at international conferences and examines what are the sources of difficulty for interpreters. Then, the study analyzes how interpreters strategically interpret humorous expressions to achieve equivalent effect among Target Language audience. Authentic data from an international conference held in Seoul show, contrary to widespread worries, the types of humor expressed at international conferences are “universal” and most times produce equivalent humor effect across languages and cultures. In interpreting humorous expressions, interpreters seem to place priority on literary delivery of Source Language but the target audience successfully figure out the universal humor. Interpreters intervene to bridge the sociocultural gaps only when necessary.

The role of the court interpreter is to allow minority language speakers to receive fair trial, just as any mainstream language speaker would, by removing the language barrier that hinders it. However, court interpreters come to surpass their original role and undertake several other social roles due to the nation's institutional restrictions, expectations and demands. News reports point out the need to have expert court interpreters in Korea. The study describes the social roles that court interpreters take on during trial proceedings in Korea based on discourse analysis on actual trial records and interviews with court interpreters. Results of the study show that court interpreters in Korea undertake various roles, such as the role of assistant for the institution and the role of spokesman for the minority language speaker among others. It was also observed that the court interpreter's role as an assistant for the institution, which is to ease communication, can affect the defense of the accused and have an influence on court proceedings and judgment in great and small scale. The study adds weight to the need for an official certification system for court interpreters and the need to assign them a socially recognized position.

The Vegetarian, a well-known Korean fiction by Han, Kang, depicts a woman who turns into a vegetarian and is rejected by her family members who inflict violence on her to make her comply with what they believe to be the social norm. This novel employs a dual point of view where the husband of the protagonist, Yeong-hye, serves as the narrator ‘I’ while Yeong-hye’s confession is presented in isolation. This point of view plays an important role in foregrounding the violence of men or social institution against women. This study explores the translation strategies used to deliver the theme of the novel. The study reveals that the translator manipulated the narrative of the novel to maximize the effect of the dual point of view and better deliver the theme of the ST. In other words, the translator intervened, serving as an implied author in the process of translation.

This paper aims to raise an attention on translation historiography within translation studies, which is one of the important and necessary areas of study on translation yet relatively under-researched, by introducing the recent discussion over Rundle’s idea and by providing comments on it based on the author’s own experience in translation historiography. Rundle(2012) brings up an interesting and valid point concerning the inherent interdisciplinarity of translation historiography, by distinguishing its two different aims of research. He sees that translation historiography can either focus on constructing a translation history itself or on contributing to find a new insight into a particular context of history. The interest for the former usually remains within the realm of translation studies as a discipline, while the exploration to the latter direction can go on to expand an academic dialogue toward the historians of other disciplines. Rundle proposes to consider the potential fruitfulness of the latter direction of translation historiography. This idea of Rundle’s, which was presented in the position paper of the 2012 special edition of Translation Studies, seized the attention of many translation historians and became a core issue of the discussion on how to study translation in historical context. This paper will provide a close look into one of the newest discussion within translation studies, that is on one of the pertinent issues of translation historiography, that is its interdisciplinarity.

This study aims at investigating the difference in translated lyrics of Stephen Sondheim's musical Sweeny Todd between its 2007 premiere and 2016 revival in South Korea and exploring the possible reasons behind the change. The two versions of translated lyrics were analyzed focusing on their phonetic and semantic features such as syllable, beat, note, pronunciation, rhyme and metaphors. The textual analysis showed that the premiere version tended to leave the original version's distinctive rhyme untranslated and faithfully preserve its expression and metaphor. This resulted in negative reviews particularly on the delivery of lyrics and may have partly affected the premiere's box office failure. On the contrary, the revival version improved the lyrics' delivery and acceptability by adjusting the number of syllable, maintaining and sometimes reinforcing the effect of rhyme and domesticating the humor and word-play, which received good reviews and possibly have contributed to the revival's commercial success. Extensive review on newspaper and magazine articles, program books of the premiere and revival, and research papers suggested that the difference in the two translated versions may be attributed to a variety of extra-textual factors such as the purpose of production, participants e.g., producers, directors and translators, and the change in the country's musical industry and social context.