| A Critical Evaluation of the Translation of Japanese Literature in Korea |
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| Hanjung LEE |
| 祥明大学校日本語圏地域学専攻副教授 |
日本文学翻訳の様相と研究の行方 |
Correspondence
Hanjung LEE ,Email: ehj@smu.ac.kr
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Published online: 30 December 2017. |
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Copyright ©2017 The Global Institute for Japanese Studies, Korea University |
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This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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| ABSTRACT |
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The translation of Japanese literature in Korea did not receive much attention during both the transitional era to the modern world and the Japanese colonial era. During this time most works of literature were simply adapted, but not translated. The anti-Japanese policy of the Rhee Syngman Government caused the translation of Japanese literature to be neglected in the period between Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule and the 1960s. In subsequent years, a substantial number of complete works, selections, and novel sequences were translated in different forms between the time of the 4.19 Revolution and the 1980s. Most of these translations were introduced in support of the policy of ‘knowing Japan’. The translations of the work of Murakami Haruki greatly influenced Korean literature in the 1990s. Moreover, during the planning stages of the translation of the complete works of Kenzaburō Ōe, an author who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, translations were required to promote ‘cultural exchange’ between Korea and Japan as well as an ‘understanding of Japan’. However, the translation of works by Murakami Haruki, including his lengthy detective novels, was more likely driven by consumption, rather than by a desire to promote cultural exchange. The complete works of individual authors such as Dazai Osamu, Soseki Natsume and Ryunosuke Akutagawa have been translated since 2005. Moreover, most of the main classical works of literature have also been translated. It can therefore be said that the translation of Japanese literature has been enjoying its golden age. These efforts have led to the consumption of many different translated works of Japanese literature in Korea. However, the critical literary evaluation of translated works is still in its infancy and has mainly focused on drawing attention to errors in translation and mistranslation. In fact, the level of evaluation has not exceeded the result of a study, ‘The Status and Analysis of 60 Years of Japanese Literature Translation’. Of late, the evaluation of literary translation in Korea has been moving in the direction of translational criticism; hence, the study of literary translation has reached a new turning point. With these developments in mind, a study of the translation of Japanese literature was conducted from multiple perspectives and evaluated against translational theories with the aim of extending the scope of Japanese studies. |
Keywords:
Translation in the selections, River novels, Knowing Japan, Cultural exchanges, A study of literary translation
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| キ―ワ―ド:
全集翻訳, 大河小説, 日本を知る, 文化交流, 翻訳研究 |
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