Translating Cultural Subtext in Modern Korean Fiction :: Free Essays Online

Translating Cultural Subtext in Modern Korean Fiction Translation as an Act of Bridging Two Cultures Literary translation can be expound in many ways. In the first place we can rally of it as re classifying, 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 argon 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 share during gatherings of literati. rase today poetry readings are not uncommon in Korea (though readings of fictionalization 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 seed such as Pak Wan-s, whose narrators often sound as if they are utter directly to the reader. Second, we can think of translating as an act of re-creating, in the grit that interpreters produce something that is recognized as literature (whatever that is--anyone who has read the first chapter of terry cloth Eagletons Literary Theory will realize how difficult it is to simply define literature). Translation can also be thought of as reenacting. Here I draw on the Lacanian notion of retrieving a confounded 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 enterprisingness between translator and author. As such, it is desirable to have a soundly match between author and translator. Such a match often manifests itself as a similarity of aesthetic outlook and a shared commitment to the authors 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 princesss 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 be intimate while translating stories by O Yng-su I myself have had a similar experience in translating stories by Hwang Sun-wn and O Chng-hi.