Korean-English translation in the context of cross-cultural communication.

摘要

Translation that focuses on a one-to-one correspondence of literal meaning between two idioms introduce unnatural sentences which may often be incomprehensible to the readers. This phenomenon, labeled “translationese” by Nida (1964, 1999), is considered one of the major contaminants of translation, and is caused by a translator's excessive fidelity toward the source language and his/her lack of sensitivity toward the receptor culture. The purpose of this study was to determine the difficulties of Korean-English translation by identifying and describing the translationese elements found therein and the extent to which they distort the channel of communication between the two languages.; The study was designed to determine whether there were Korean-English translated texts which suffered from translationese and yet, were published, what the structural, semantic and cultural features of Korean-English translationese were, and the frequency distributions of these features.; Thirteen non-literary editorials and commentaries translated from Korean to English were selected from an on-line Korean-English Internet newspaper and reviewed by 5 readers with varying linguistic/cultural backgrounds. A total of 1029 instances in the texts which did not conform to American stylistic expectations were identified, from which 19 problem areas emerged. Problem areas that most frequently hindered reader comprehension were Expression which occurred 176 times (17% of the entire problem areas), followed by Punctuation with 154 counts (15%), and Unclear Meaning with 128 counts (12%), followed by Vocabulary problem which were noted 81 times (8%), Sentence Structure, 78 times (8%), and Word Form, 67 times (7%). Unnecessary Element and Tense problems occurred 54 and 51 times respectively, each constituting 5% of the problem area. Length problem emerged 46 times (4%), and Article problem, 45 times (4%), followed by Word Order (3%). Errors regarding Conjunction/transition, Grammar, Typography, Pronoun, and Preposition each constituted 2% of the problem areas. Difficulties in the area of Incomprehensibility, Misinterpretation of Source Text, and Style occurred at a relatively low rate (1% each).; The findings pointed to the existence of a communication problem for English readers interested in translated Korean publications. It was recommended that translator/ESL/EFL instructions emphasize the effects of linguistic and cultural variations on the comprehension of texts.