As a ground work for teaching Korean language to Arabs, this study tried to suggest Korean translations pragmatically equivalent to Islamic daily expressions and examined Koreans’ perception on each suggestion for Korean translations as well as that...
As a ground work for teaching Korean language to Arabs, this study tried to suggest Korean translations pragmatically equivalent to Islamic daily expressions and examined Koreans’ perception on each suggestion for Korean translations as well as that of Arab students studying Korean.
In the process of executing the research, various Islamic expressions including the word ‘allah’, the situations in which they are used, and their illocutionary intentions were listed. Then pragmatic principals of using these Islamic expressions were examined, and it was revealed that the cultural implications of Islamic expressions are not able to function wholly in Korean culture.
Next, various strategies and techniques for translating ‘culture-bound terms’ were reviewed in order to apply them to the translation of Islamic daily expressions, which are a case of ‘culture-bound expressions’. Considerations were listed to adjust these word-level translating strategies and techniques into higher level, including phrases, clauses or sentences.
After that, in order to draw out more specific translating strategies, Korean translations of Islamic expressions appearing in several Arab novels were extracted and analyzed, categorized as ‘transcription, formal equivalence, or functional equivalence’, adjusting major techniques in translating culture-bound terms suggested by Harvey(2000). It was found that sub-strategies such as ‘replacing’ and ‘deleting’, and specific techniques such as ‘amplifying, alluding the agent(allah) and changing descriptive point of view’ were used to make translations more appropriate for Korean culture.
Using these strategies, Korean translations for 20 Islamic expressions were suggested and their appropriacy was graded by Koreans and Arab students studying Korean. The result was examined by expressions and groups based on religion or proficiency in the other party’s language and culture. Qualitative examinations by interviewing respondents were also made.
Although the results varied by expressions, Koreans tended to prefer non-religious translations or modified versions using familiar Korean idioms, if religious. As for translations mentioning God, Koreans’ responses were rather negative, judging that the speaker is being indecisive or avoiding responsibility by shifting it to God.
On the other hand, Arabs thought that the transcription and the formal equivalence were close to the original Arabic expression. They, nonetheless, found the functional equivalences more appropriate, considering the cultural background of Korean listener. Arabs, contrary to what is mentioned in previous researches, were well aware of the religious meaning of Islamic expressions no matter how daily they were used. However, opinions varied among Arab respondents whether to replace the expressions by non-religious translations or restrict their usage only for Muslims.
Based on the result of the research, possibilities of expression or translation courses of Korean language using Islamic daily expressions as an educative topic were finally proposed. Considerations were also made to hold this kind of class in a cross-cultural point of view.
Despite the purpose to be a basic study in teaching Korean language to Arabs, the research has limits as stated below:
First, by conducting a complicated survey with numerous questions, the number of respondents was too small to draw out statistically significant tendencies. To compensate this, interviews were carried out to see common opinions of respondent groups. Checking individual opinions could also lead to a valuable improvement in organizing a language course, considering the fact that it is not offered only for the majority but takes account of each student’s specific features.
Also, suggested situations for certain expressions such as bismi llah, hasbiya llah were not quite appropriate because the research focused too much on selecting non-religious situations. In this case, consistency of intention was barely able to be analyzed. However, appropriacy in Korean culture, judged by measuring how religious the translations were, was still considered significant.
Lastly, due to the limitation of time and space, the validity of arguments from the survey result was not able to be confirmed in a real Korean class properly organized. The deficiency of not developing actual ways to coordinate each student’s opinion is especially to be supplemented in later researches, when adopting a sensitive matter such as ‘religion’, as an educative topic.
In spite of these shortcomings, this study still has a value because it searched for possibilities of considering student’s culture in teaching Korean language to Arabs. It could also be taken into account that this study directly researched Arab students’ perception on Korean translations, breaking the usual unilateral translation which always prioritized the appropriacy evaluated by Koreans.
In conclusion, this study, which tried a pragmatic research in a cross-cultural point of view, is expected to function as a basic work for developing effective and improved ways of teaching Korean to Arabs in the future.
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