A corpus-based investigation of theme choice in English translations of Korean online tourist texts - with focus on interactional themes

摘要

The present study is a descriptive investigation into differences in the distribution of theme types and interactional themes across three corpora - online Korean promotional tourist texts (STC), their English translations (TTC) and comparable authentic English texts (TLC). The paper examines two hypotheses based on observed differences in thematic structure between Korean and English travel brochures, assuming that STC's thematic features are transferred into TTC in the process of translation; first, TTC will be more numerous in circumstance themes and less frequent in process themes than TLC, and, second, TTC will be critically deficient in interactional themes compared to TLC. Data analysis supports both hypotheses, but it also finds TTC to be a blend of both STC and TLC features. The practical implications of the research findings are discussed in the concluding section from the perspective of writer-reader interactivity and functional translation theory, advocating acceptability over adequacy if the skopos of translation is to achieve perlocutionary equivalence rather than locutionary equivalence.