Earticle

This study dwells on the Japanese interpreters who made a career in Colonial Joseon while Mizuno Rentarō (水野 錬太郎) was in service as General Manager of State Affairs after March 1 Independence Movement. It explores two research questions: First, were the interpreters in charge of only interpretation at that time, or did they have other duties besides interpreting? Second, what kind of people were the interpreters who were in charge of interpretation for the high rankers of the Government-General of Joseon? In that regard, first of all, this study briefly explored the background of cultural politics in the Japanese colonial era and described the situations of official Japanese interpreters at the time and the status of the Korean language education of the Japanese. In addition, the articles in newspapers were analyzed to investigate the actual interpretation details done by Japanese interpreters. Lastly, it examined through historical data the background of several interpreters who professionally translated at the colonial Japanese authorities for men of influence.

In sharp contrast to great attention to the quality of Machine Translation (MT) raw output, the quality of post-edited output has drawn relatively little attention in Korean translation studies, although some errors in MT output can remain even after post-editing. Against this backdrop, this study sets out to investigate accuracy errors in post-edited output, based on Korean-English parallel translation corpus for AI training released in June 2021 by the National Information Society Agency. For this purpose, 200 parallel sentences with accuracy errors were collected and classified by error type. According to the analysis results, mistranslation errors account for about two-thirds, with the rest in omissions, indicating that quite a number of omissions are still left in post-edited output. While lexical errors ranging from words to clauses are found most frequently in mistranslations, syntax errors represent a surprisingly large portion, with many errors in modifiers and subjects. This study draws attention to quality in MT post-editing, suggesting the need for further investigation into factors affecting the quality of post-edited output.

Translating a text in Chinese minority literature is one of the domains that needs to be actively researched in Chinese-Korean translation studies. The problems in translating the text in minority literature that has not received much attention tend to be more serious, and this is largely due to cultural heterogeneity and linguistic hybridity. Translation of minority literature requires a strategy in accordance with its identity; it is ‘minoritizing translation,’ and this is also called ‘foreignization’ by Venuti. This paper (i) argues that translation of Chinese minority literature with linguistic hybridity expresses unfamiliarity as a strategy, and (ii) presents a strategy of defamiliarization, which is based on Brecht’s alienation effect, assuming that unfamiliarity from cultural heterogeneity and linguistic hybridity can be relieved by minoritizing translation. When readers encounter a text of unknown culture with a creative intervention of a translator, they are more likely to accept the unfamiliarity easily. This paper is an initial study that discusses cultural translation based on linguistic hybridity of the text in Chinese minority literature. The actual application to Chinese-Korean translation is called for in future studies. In subsequent research, a case study will be conducted, which analyzes a re-written text expressing defamiliarization between Chinese and Korean cultures.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the source domains of the ‘journey metaphor’ shown in political speeches has changed in Chinese-Korean translation and the factors affecting the use of translation strategies. The finding shows that, there were three cases of ‘journey metaphor’ in Chinese-Korean translation: source domain maintenance, source domain difference, and source domain loss. Translation is most effective when the source domain is maintained. Substitution of the source domain is selected when there is a difference in conceptualization between cultures or when there is a more idiomatic metaphor in the target language. In the case of source domain loss, it is also greatly affected by explicitation and avoidance of repetition. In addition to conceptual metaphors, factors that influence metaphor translation include language structure, metaphor convention, and text function. ‘Four-character idioms’ are difficult to achieve equivalent of effects in translation due to differences in language structure, and should focus on conveying the overall meaning according to the context of the text. In texts with conventional metaphors and informational functions, acceptability in target language should first be considered. Description and omitting may also be used relatively freely as alternative strategies.

Body language is one of the non-verbal components of human social behavior. It is a crucial part of how we communicate and what we deliver in social interactions. In communicative situations involving audio description (AD), too, body language is significant in that it provides (con/co)textual information that helps the AD user better understand the unfolding event. However, the timing constraints contingent on AD make it difficult to insert a commentary describing body language. This study aims to reveal strategies for audio-describing body language in television dramas and to discuss what implications the findings have for AD practice. For this purpose, five Korean TV dramas with ADs were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. A total of 111 instances of body language use were identified and categorized according to an expanded version of Mazur’s (2014) typology ― “literalness,” “explicitation,” “generalization,” “omission,” “interpretation,” and “combination of strategies.” The findings show that literalness and combination of strategies are most pronounced in the data set and that, in the combination of strategies, explicitation is the most frequently used strategy. The study concludes with a brief discussion of implications and limitations.

Humour is one of the most difficult items to deal with in audiovisual translation because translating humour puts emphasis on retaining the perlocutionary effect of the ST rather than adhering to faithfulness. This is also true to audio description as an intersemiotic translation. Furthermore, when humour is created by interplay between semiotic resources such as image and sound, audio-describing translators need to interpret the ‘multimodal humour’ and try to find an effective solution to elicit intended response from spectators. Against this backdrop, this study examines the audio description of the Korean slapstick comedy film Lava island, where multimodal humour is created by the use of various semiotic resources. As a theoretical framework, the researcher adopted a model of multimodality proposed by Stöckl, ‘a networked system of choices’. This paper suggests three considerations for the audio description of multimodal humour: (1) the information value of modes involved in humour, (2) the extent to which information is revealed, and (3) a cohesive link between core modes.

Synchronization is one of the most important factors in dubbing. which is a fact established repeatedly by many different sources. Chaume(2004b) defined the boundaries of the subject and classified types of synchronization: phonetic or lip synchronization; isochrony or synchrony between utterances and pauses; and kinetic synchrony or body movement synchrony. This study aims to analyze the three types of synchronizations found in English-dubbed Korean films that were released in North America in a DVD format with dubbed soundtracks. The study shows that bilabial and labial consonants in original Korean dialogues were dealt with under careful scrutiny in dubbed versions when actors were shot in close-ups. The duration of the actors’ utterance, or isochrony, was strictly followed and sometimes “overly” observed to match the lips of actors on mute. Kinetic synchrony was more respected when actors were shown in full shot. Dubbing on mute was also found to coincide with actors’ body movement on screen. The examples of creative use of synchronizations and skillful addition on mute suggest that synchronization is not just a constraint that forces translators to put their skills to use, but an opportunity for translators to move away from literal translation and put forward creative alternatives.

This article explores the translation motivation of Liang Qichao(1873-1929) in the process of modernizing China. Liang was a highly famed enlightenment thinker, politician and translator who had tried to introduce modern civilization in the late Qing dynasty. He translated the Japanese political novel 『Encounter with the Beauties(佳人之奇遇)』 and the French adventure novel 『Two years’ Vacation(Deux ans de vacances)』 in early several years of his exile life in Japan(1898-1903). Liang’s translation was designed to enlighten Chinese people so as to serve the political and social reform. He thought that as a nation-state, China had to establish a independent country with the equality of nation’s sovereignty, and as a nation, the Chinese people needed to have the public morale. Liang included the progressive spirit and the Self- governing spirit among the public morals. He intended to inspire the thought of independent nation-state and the progressive spirit and Self-governing spirit into the hearts of Chinese people by translating the two novels. The main idea of his introductory and explanatory notes in his translation is strikingly similar to that his other famous articles. This case study indicates that translation was regarded as a social tool to modernize China and enlighten the people at the time.

Drawing on the theoretical framework of corrective feedback in second language education, this discourse anlaytic study examined corrective feedback in four consecutive interpreting classes taught by two interpreter trainers. The analysis demonstrates that trainers facilitated collaborative learning in classroom: Engaging the whole class of trainees in dynamic feedback interactions, the trainers offered corrective feedback to both trainees’ interpreting and peer feedback. The findings suggest that peer feedback, which is a hallmark of collaborative learning in interpreting classes, provided opportunities for trainers to assess trainees’ understanding of the source language speech and target language skills, and teach interpreting skills either by confirming or correcting peer feedback. The findings indicates that reformulation was prevalent in trainees’ corrective feedback whereas trainers’ corrective feedback was predominantly prompts that led trainees to identify and analyze interpreting problems and to offer solutions for performance enhancement. This paper, which is a first attempt of its kind to investigate the discourse of interpreting classes, calls for further research that could throw some light on interpreting pedagogy demonstrated in feedback interactions in interpreting classes and broaden our understanding about how interpreting can be taught effectively through corrective feedback.

The scholarly discussion on the task of literary translators has been significantly bound by Benjamin’s critical essay in 1923 with a similar title. However, the discussion on Benjamin’s essay could face limitations in its application in translation practice due to its conceptual and metaphysical dimension. This study intends to discuss and analyze the major tasks, roles and qualifications of the English translators of Korean literature, focusing on the strategies and patterns of the successful English translations in order to raise social and scholarly recognition and identification of the remarkable achievements made by the literary translators who are already acclaimed abroad but frequently become subject to the harsh public condemnation and scorn by domestic critics and media. It is an immutable truth fact that there is always a reason for every successful translation, and this paper aims to categorize the ten most notable roles of those successful English translators of Korean literature, identifying their unique and critical strategies and characteristics and highlighting the due recognition of the successful translators’ significant achievements, which will remain as a genuine and invaluable task of the literary translators of Korean literature.