TRANSLATION and URGENCY in POSTBELLUM IMAGE BUILDING Translations from Korean Published in the US After the Korean War
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TRANSLATION AND URGENCY IN POSTBELLUM IMAGE BUILDING Translations from Korean published in the US after the Korean War Ester Torres Simón Universitat Rovira i Virgili A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Diploma of Advanced Studies Doctoral program in Translation and Intercultural Studies Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain Supervisors: Professor Anthony Pym, Universitat Rovira i Virgili Professor Joaquín Beltrán Antolí, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2005 Table of Contents Summary .................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 5 The Korean War’s link to today .............................................................................................. 5 Literature Review ..................................................................................................................... 10 Translation Studies in Korea ................................................................................................. 10 Translation and post-war ................................................................................................... 11 Theoretical Background ........................................................................................................... 13 Descriptive Translation Studies and Polysystems Theory .................................................... 14 A look into the broader picture ............................................................................................. 18 Classifying the corpus ........................................................................................................... 21 Indirect translation ................................................................................................................ 23 Translation into non-mother tongue (L2) ............................................................................. 24 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 26 Korea: The Hermit Kingdom ................................................................................................... 27 First contacts with the West: nobody’s friend ...................................................................... 27 Korea as seen by the world ................................................................................................... 31 The Korean War: a defence of principles ............................................................................. 33 Translation and Korea ........................................................................................................... 36 Definition of terms ................................................................................................................... 37 Research Methodology ............................................................................................................. 39 Expected Results ................................................................................................................... 39 Data Compilation ..................................................................................................................... 42 Corpus for Analysis .............................................................................................................. 44 Presentation of the works included in the corpus ................................................................. 45 Works before 1950 ............................................................................................................ 45 Works found both in the Index Translationum and LTI .................................................... 46 Works found only in the Index Translationum .................................................................. 47 Works listed in ILT ............................................................................................................ 49 Other works ....................................................................................................................... 50 Presentation of the translators analyzed in the corpus .......................................................... 51 Missionaries ....................................................................................................................... 51 Foreign Scholars ................................................................................................................ 52 Korean translators .............................................................................................................. 52 Organizations ..................................................................................................................... 54 Other Languages ................................................................................................................ 54 Presentation of the US publishers and relationships with other publishers .......................... 55 Asia-oriented publishers .................................................................................................... 55 Independent Publishers ...................................................................................................... 56 2 Specialized publishers ....................................................................................................... 57 Through connections ......................................................................................................... 57 On Publishers ..................................................................................................................... 57 Data Analysis ........................................................................................................................... 59 Rise of translations ................................................................................................................ 59 Korean Translators ................................................................................................................ 61 Translation funding ............................................................................................................... 67 Non-subsidized volumes ....................................................................................................... 70 Proposals by translators ..................................................................................................... 71 Proposals by publishers ..................................................................................................... 72 On image building ................................................................................................................. 73 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 77 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 80 Appendix 1: Corpus ................................................................................................................. 85 Appendix 2: Corpus For Future Research ................................................................................ 87 English-Korean translations published in the United States from 1975 to 2003 as registered in Index Translationum. ........................................................................................................ 87 Translations published in Korea from 1950 to 1980 as registered by the Korean Translation Association ............................................................................................................................ 90 Appendix 3: False Translations ................................................................................................ 94 Appendix 4:Correspondence between John Meskill and Choe Pu’S descendents ................... 96 3 Summary The Korean War marks the beginning of a relationship between South Korea and the United States, beneficial for both. The need to introduce South Korea to the United States population as a justification to the collaboration of the army into a Civil War unrelated to their country will be shown in the sudden subventions and support to Korean translations into English. Moreover, it will create a circumstance of urgency in which the ideal translation practice will have to be substituted by the forms of available translation: translation into non- mother tongue and relay translation. The urgency variable and the special characteristics of the situation will make most theoretical backgrounds inadequate in order to sustain a theoretical study. 4 Introduction This research will look into the practice of translation from Korean into English right after the Korean War, in order to discern to what extent a historical situation creates a real rise of translation demand and to what extent a government may play a moderator role in such a situation. If the government is not involved, the role of third parties as publishers’ resources will be looked into. The Korean War’s link to today After the Korean War, new dates became part of Korea’s national festivities, all of them summarized in two numbers: 3-1, 6-6, 6-25, 8-15. The first of March commemorates a popular uprising against the Japanese colonization that ended in thousands of wounded; the sixth of June