The main purposes of this thesis are to specify the educational expectancy norms that older generation of Korea have in mind when it comes to children and adolescent literature, and to examine the educational recontextualization aspects in the transla...
The main purposes of this thesis are to specify the educational expectancy norms that older generation of Korea have in mind when it comes to children and adolescent literature, and to examine the educational recontextualization aspects in the translation of children and adolescent novels, based on such external norms. Children and adolescent literature is a genre that must have both artistic values and educational values, and it responds relatively well to external, macroscopic environmental factors, compared with the case of adult literature. In this regard, this study analyzed the recontextualization tendency of Chinese children and adolescent literature that have been introduced in the publication market of Korea, in view of educational expectancy norms of Korean society, trying to prove an interrelationship between the social context and the text translation. To this end, this study approached the subject in three dimensions―social practice, discursive practice of publishers, and text: first, theoretical literature was reviewed in order to draw the norms the older generation of Korean society has in mind about the educational role of children and adolescent novels; then, the stance and practice of publishers regarding the educational factors, when publishing books, were examined through in-depth interviews; lastly, the recontextualization types found in the real novel translation texts, focusing on these educational expectancy norms, were categorized and presented through text analysis.
First, in order to clearly specify the educational expectancy norms forming outside of texts, the study comprehensively analyzed: deliberation and censorship systems that directly affect children and adolescent books; specialists' domination discourse on the educational function of children and adolescent literature; the selection criteria of the eight institutes who make and distribute the lists of recommended books for children and adolescent readers. The result of analysis confirmed that, regarding the children and adolescent literature, the social frame, the discourse of specialists, and the selection criteria of book recommending institutes are all interrelated and heading in the same direction. The result also presented the five categories of educational expectancy norms the Korean society has about the children and adolescent literature: in view of content, the three categories are‘importing a national and social identity’, ‘expanding cognitive area’, ‘developing affective area'; and, in view of format, the two categories are‘securing readability' and‘considering aesthetic impression'.
Next, the study interviewed 14 persons in depth, who are engaged in the publication of children and adolescent books, through which it examined, how the educational norms shared within a society affect a decision-making process in the publication translation, and what choices publishers make to improve the educational value of a translated work. For this, a survey was conducted with the following four items: 1) children and adolescent book publication and external environment 2) things to consider in the publication of children and adolescent literature books 3) consideration of educational aspect in the publication of children and adolescent literature books 4) recontextualization strategy focusing on the educational function.
The following is the findings from the interview responses for each question; first, most publishers, in planning and publishing children and adolescent literature books, are influenced by such peripheral factors as publication regulations, education curricula or college entrance examination systems, the preference of book-recommending organizations and educational institutes, the needs of adult/children/adolescent readers, the trend of best selling books, etc. This seems related with the motivation in reality that the book sales would increase if publishers make books that can be well-accepted in a society by considering the external needs. Secondly, the considerations which publishers give priority to when they plan a book include: literary value of a work, popularity and written style of a writer, sense of subject, originality, market demand, selling possibility, etc., and stressed that, in case of foreign literary works, they also consider the award-winning history, the reviews from local mass communication media, a work's chemistry with Korea's sentiment, etc., as major criteria. Also, when it comes to subjects, publishers tend to select the content that helps with the inner growth and problem-solving competency development of children and adolescent readers, by conveying promising and positive messages. Third, publishers empathize with the educational role of children and adolescent literature, and make intentional efforts s when publishing books, in which they select more works that convey educational messages and censor or adjust any harmful and sensational content in advance. Fourth, publishers agreed that they tend to intervene and participate more in the process of translation and editing, than they do when they publish adult books, because the books target children and adolescents in growth phase. The educational recontextualization strategies taken by publishers, when they publish foreign children and adolescent literature are: deleting or filtering out elements that can hardly be accepted ideologically; adjusting the suggestive and immoral content, the sensitive content that can be controversial in the society, the content that might confuse or mislead readers in the regular school curricula; leaving out disparate elements; simplifying wordy descriptions or statements or simplifying the structure of narratives for a better understanding; reconstructing literary devices such as pun, etc., to make them more familiar within the culture of a target language.
Based on the previously-drawn five educational expectancy norms and the practice of publishers, the last text analysis separated the 'text selection' stage and the 'text creation' stage and examined a concrete recontextualization aspect materialized in each stage.
First, for analysis of the‘text selection’stage, the study summarized the bibliographic information from a total of 63 Chinese children and adolescent novels that have been translated in Korea, and reviewed such overall characteristics as nations of origin, writers, genre composition, subjects, reviews in their source language cultures, etc., through which, it found out the tendency of works that are preferred and easily-accepted in the children and adolescent book publication market of Korea. Among the Chinese children and adolescent novels that were translated in Korean from 2000 to 2014, there were overwhelmingly more works from the mainland of China than those from Taiwan; the works of only a handful of writers were noticeably favored; by genre, realist novels accounted for 68%, the most response. The subjects in most works were universal―regardless of social ideologies and, time, and space―some of which are everyday lives of a main character who is in growth phase, the emotions or worries anybody can agree, virtues required to grow into a respectful adult, regrets about the vices as a human being, etc. Also, award winning works account for 65%, implying that whether a certain work received a prize or not is used as a major criterium in deciding the educational value and literary value of that work.
Second, for analysis of the‘text creation’ stage, the study conducted ‘constant comparison method’on the ST and TT of 42 Chinese children and adolescent novels, extracted the cases of recontextualization focusing on the previously-drawn five educational expectancy norms, and categorized their types and detailed strategies. The analyzed educational recontextualization types were categorized in ten groups: to import the national, and social identity, 1) purifying ideology; to expand cognitive domain 2) providing related information 3) correcting information; to develop affective domain, 4) weakening negative factors 5)adjusting honorific expressions; to secure readability 6) processing special metaphors 7) domesticating exotic elements 8) adjusting a written style 9) adjusting narratives; and to consider the aesthetic impression 10) reproducing the literary effect.
This study tried to examine, with its focus on education, how the texts of Chinese children and adolescent literature are being recontextualized in reality, considering its connectivity with the macroscopic environment such as the‘social practice’including the publication system of a target language society and overall social recognition and social convention about children and adolescent literature within a target language society; and‘discursive practice’of publishers. The significance of this study lies in that it tried to establish the concept of ‘educational expectancy norm', through which it clearly specifies the expectation and demand for the educational role which children and adolescent literature must assume, and that it tried to macroscopically view the translation phenomena in children and adolescent literature in a social context. Also, it is meaningful in that it is the first study summarizing the status quo of Chinese children and adolescent novels that were accepted in Korea for the recent 15 years. This thesis, however, noted the fact that both groups are under age and dealt with higher-grade elementary students and adolescents altogether as a group, whom, for a clearer result, can be subdivided into different age groups in the future. Also, in an effort to focus on clarifying the relation between external environmental factors and the phenomena appearing in the translated texts, this study had to compress the 'translation’and‘publishing’into one stage, and exclude the viewpoints and stances of translators, which might need to be added in the further studies. The study had another limit in specifying the recontextualization types based on educational expectancy norms, in which, the study categorized them comprehensively and described the phenomena, rather than examining each category deeply. Despite all these limits, this study has the significance in that it gave shape to the educational expectancy norms forming silently in the Korean publication market of children and adolescent books, and in that it tried to categorize the recontextualization types implying how these expectancy norms work in the Korean translation process of Chinese children and adolescent novels, comprehensively though. It is hoped that the results drawn in this study can be used in the future to better understand the status quo of Korea's acceptance of Chinese children and adolescent literature and also to be used as a reference in the related studies, publication planning, and translation strategy.
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