Translating Cultural Subtext in Modern Korean Fiction
Translation as an Act of Bridging Two Cultures
Literary translation can be described in many ways. In the first place we can think of it as retelling, in that we take a Korean story and tell it in English. In retelling the story we make it public. This means we have an audience, either readers of our translation or listeners of a public reading of that translation. Public readings are an important way of disseminating a translation. And in the case of Korea, readings have a special relevance. In premodern times improvised poems were often shared during gatherings of literati. Even today poetry readings are not uncommon in Korea (though readings of fiction are rare--a vestige of the greater esteem traditionally attached to poetry by Koreans?). Retelling is an especially apt approach to translation when we translate an author such as Pak Wan-sô, whose narrators often sound as if they are speaking directly to the reader.
Second, we can think of translating as an act of re-creating, in the sense that translators produce something that is recognized as literature (whatever that is--anyone who has read the first chapter of Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory will realize how difficult it is to precisely define literature).
Translation can also be thought of as reenacting. Here I draw on the Lacanian notion of retrieving a lost narrative of our life. Translators may be thought of as taking part as a silent observer, or, to borrow the title of a Joseph Conrad story, as a “secret sharer,” in the stories they reenact.
Finally, translation is a joint enterprise between translator and author. As such, it is desirable to have a good match between author and translator. Such a match often manifests itself as a similarity of aesthetic outlook and a shared commitment to the author’s works. In this joint enterprise the translator is a kind of medium. JaHyun Kim Haboush reports, for example, that the voice of Lady Hong rang in her head for years as she translated that princess’s memoirs, the Hanjungnok. Other translators have described this phenomenon as a merging of themselves with the persona of their author. The late Marshall R. Pihl reported having such an experience while translating stories by O Yông-su; I myself have had a similar experience in translating stories by Hwang Sun-wôn and O Chông-hûi.
Another thing that the cultural rule helped to benefit Hong Ulsu and Kang Pyongju was to provide them jobs that Koreans would never had before under Japan’s rule. The cultural rule not only helped in the expansion of schools which allowed Koreans more opportunities to gain advanced studies and more job options, but appointed more Koreans to civil services and judiciary, created advisory councils of carefully chosen Koreans, and nominally re-adjusted dual pay scale for bureaucrats. Again, Hong Ulsu met a kind Japanese person who became his boss when he work for him as an apprentice in which he was the one who helped him the most when he arrived in Japan, such as he provided meals for him, paid him his wages, and also paid for his schooling.
... of language and education is the most important in this story and society. The make use of two different languages in a narrative, provides a reader a perplexing yet fascinating image of characterization and customs. Multilingual story telling pushes the reader to decelerate and acquire supplemental focus on the expressions which are in the small fragments, however as soon as the reader has figured out the foreign words, he or she acquires a priceless picture of the theme of this story. The panorama of native words and phrases, cultural perceptions, and class dispute taken from the incorporation of two different languages are helpful for the reader to obtain significance that he or she couldn't gain if exclusively one language was employed in the story. Just as the power of language is applied to unveil a society, a better comprehension is provided to the reader.
I hadn't really considered the importance of the narrative voice on the way the story is told until now. In "Araby", "Livvie" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" the distinctive narrative voices and their influences shed light on hidden meanings and the narrator's credibility.
Srinivasa Iyengar, you don’t. Iyengar says, “poetry, by nature, is untranslatable. [A] competent translator can, however, play the good broker between the poet and the reader... and give the intimations of the poet’s sovereign utterance.” But even this seems to suggest that at best, the translator is only a middleman, able to convey the subtleties of the poet’s original work, but not without noted differences. Famous poet Bysse Shelley calls translation of poetry “vain”, saying “it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principal of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language to another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no
Written stories differ in numerous ways, but most of them have one thing in common; they all have a narrator that, on either rare occasions or more regularly, help to tell the story. Sometimes, the narrator is a vital part of the story since without him or her, it would not be possible to tell the story in the same way, and sometimes, the narrator has a very small role in the story. However, he or she is always there, and to compare how different authors use, and do not use, this outside perspective writing tool, a comparison between Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, Henry James’ Daisy Miller, and David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly will be done.
L’Engle, L'Engle. “Focus On The Story, Not Readers…” Writer Apr 2010: p. 24-25. MAS Ultra-School Edition. EBSCOhost. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
• AW’s work is deeply rooted in oral tradition; in the passing on of stories from generation to generation in the language of the people. To AW the language had a great importance. She uses the “Slave language”, which by others is seen as “not correct language”, but this is because of the effect she wants the reader to understand.
When hearing the phrase “police brutality,” many people imagine batons cracking skulls, tasers electrocuting bodies and bullets penetrating innocent teens. While police officers have been known to use violence, police brutality does not occur as often as many believe. In many situations, officers have to act on impulse and curiosity, despite the backlash the media may create.
Looking at the world through an author’s autobiography versus an autobiographical fiction, one finds that most have similar characteristics. For instance, they can encompass both drama and struggles, while the characters can be humorous or serious, formal or informal. However, there are differences in these two genres in respect to how they shape the authors own world. In Catalina de Euraso’s autobiography, we are given the 1st person, factual, view of the wo...
Cahir claims that a traditional translation “maintains the overall traits of the book” (16) which include “its plot, settings, and stylistic conventions but revamps particular ways
Translation is a linguistic science, but it occurs within a theological and moral framework. The issue is a sensitive one, as theology involves an obligation to the text and morality involves an obligation to the
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In the late 1970s, the focus of translation studies shifted to the process of translation as well as the receivers. Hans Vermeer is the founder of Skopos theory. As the Greek word skopos indicates, this theory stresses that translati...
In human society, translation plays a significant role, which helps realize effective communication among people. Benjamin (as cited in Venuti, 2000) indicates translation is the mode, which plays a function of transmitting information; hence translatability determines whether the information could be effectively and appropriately delivered and is regarded as the “essential quality of certain works”. Throughout history, many scholars have developed translation theories, which provide various effective translation strategies and methods, to explore the translatability. Equivalence theory points out that all languages always share some similarities; hence the languages could be exchanged (Nida, as cited in Venuti, 2000). The skopos theory emphasizes
The work of the translator stars with the reading of the ST: he has to study the lexicon, the grammatical structure, the communicative intention of the writer, and of course the cultural context in which is developed the ST, in order to identify the best translation strategy able to express the original intention.