This research is a descriptive translation study which aims to analyze and describe the characteristics of Korean translations of Chinese novels, with reference to André Lefevere’s rewriting theory. Lefevere (1992c: 9) has defined translation i... This research is a descriptive translation study which aims to analyze and describe the characteristics of Korean translations of Chinese novels, with reference to André Lefevere’s rewriting theory. Lefevere (1992c: 9) has defined translation is the most obviously recognizable and potentially the most influential type of rewriting. Having literary systems in mind, he described rewriting is bound to happen in the process of translation of a literary work according to a certain ideology or poetics of a target language (TL) culture, under constraints of professionals inside the TL literary translation system (e.g. translators) and patronage outside of the system (e.g. publisher). Using this rewriting concept as the main theoretical framework, this research selected the Korean translations of “100 greatest Chinese novels in the 20th century” named by the Chinese newsmagazine Yazhou Zhoukan as target texts, and examined the backgrounds and relevant information of such texts and then conducted detailed text analysis. Of said target texts, forty seven translations published under selection by the Korean literary translation system after the 21st century (i.e. January 2001 from August 2014) were chosen for the analysis of the characteristics and backgrounds of the translations, and twenty eight translations were chosen for the text analysis. Detailed process of the analysis is as follows. First, in order to identify the backgrounds and characteristics of the published translations under selection by the Korean literary translation system after the 21st century, forty seven translated texts were analyzed in terms of their publication year (based on the year of first edition), time setting, main theme, genre, region of birth and gender of the author, etc. The analysis revealed that the selected novels demonstrated a diverse span of time settings, main themes, and genres with high percentage of female and Chinese authors residing outside of Mainland China including Taiwanese and Hong Kongers. Second, in order to examine the actual forms of rewriting taken in the translated texts, text analysis of twenty eight translations was conducted in the following three stages. In the first stage, the titles, meta-texts, and general strategies were analyzed as preliminary data analysis. The results showed that diverse translation strategies were used in the title translations. Various remarks about rewriting strategies were also found in the meta-text analysis. A remark worthy of note in the meta-texts is that the translator made “faithfulness” to the source text as the most important criterion for the translation, but had no choice but to rewrite the original for improving readability, etc. In terms of general strategies, most of the translated texts were the full representations of their originals, but the partially translated text was mostly rewritten with totally different images from the original in its contents. In the second stage, division of text, titles of chapters, narratives, and dialogue structures were examined as macro-analysis. The analysis revealed that most of the translations faithfully followed the division of text and titles of chapters of the originals; however, the narratives and dialogue structures often allowed tremendous forms of rewriting. In terms of the narratives, translators often abridged detailed descriptions of the originals, omitted short descriptions before or after dialogues, and added their own interpretations. Translators also added honorific expressions in the dialogues, which did not exist in the source texts, showing rewriting patterns that reflect the hierarchical human relationships unique to the Korean culture. In the third stage, selection of words, grammatical patterns, rhetorical techniques and realizations, modality and speech acts were investigated as micro-analysis. The analysis identified twelve components related to the universe of discourse which include the names of persons, places and shops, objects, animals and plants, customs, literature-related components, history, art, systems, religion, gender, body language, and unnormative behaviors; twelve components related to the language which include analogy, idiomatic expressions, onomatopoetic and mimetic words, personification, repetitions, images, marked expressions, swear words, personal pronouns, sentence final endings, modals, and speech acts; and diverse translation strategies unique to the individual translators which include the use of footnotes and replacement, addition, or deletion of expressions. Based on the findings of the above three-staged text analyses, conclusions were drawn as follows. The forms of rewriting taken in the Korean translations of Chinese literature can be divided into those which are identifiable in almost all translated texts (e.g. rewriting in a way that builds more hierarchical character relationships than the originals) and those identifiable on a case-by-case basis in the individual translators and translated texts. In terms of accepting new and unfamiliar components in the source texts, rewriting took ununified forms: while certain translations actively introduced new and unfamiliar components in the source language culture, other translations eliminated and replaced such unfamiliarities by means of rewriting in a form acceptable in the universe of discourse and language of the target language culture. Although Lefevere declared a rewriting of an original text is carried out by reflecting a certain ideology and a poetics in the target language culture, the findings of the text analysis in this research demonstrated that the translation strategies held by individual translators, in addition to the ideology and poetics in the target language culture, would bring out very complicated and diverse forms of rewriting in the translations. This research has significance in providing descriptions of the rewriting found in relatively large number of Korean translations of Chinese literatures, not limited to specific works, authors or translators, and attempting to classify the forms of rewriting in detail. However, such attempt for the classification might serve as a limitation of this research as well as significance. One case found in the course of classification often fell within multiple categories. This phenomenon might show the necessity of supplementation of the classification system adopted in this study in further research, but demonstrate the complexities of “culture” itself and the integrated nature of a language as an element constituting a culture and as means of expressing the culture. The researcher hopes that the findings of this research will contribute to an understanding of the phenomenon of rewriting that arises in the Chinese-Korean literary translation systems and be further systemized by more research.
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