Honorifics in Korean Drama: A COMPARISON OF TRANSLATION PROCEDURES BETWEEN AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL SUBTITLERS By Joyce van Rossum S1025910 [email protected] Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Linguistics, Translation in Theory and Practice First reader: Dr. A.G. Dorst Second reader: K. Zeven Leiden University June 2015 A COMPARISON OF TRANSLATION PROCEDURES 1 Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4 Chapter 1: On Fansubbing and Korean Drama .......................................................................... 7 1.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 7 1.2 Literature Overview .......................................................................................................... 7 1.2.1 Professional and Amateur Subtitling ......................................................................... 7 1.2.2 Characteristics of Fansubbing .................................................................................. 10 1.2.3 The Abusive Subtitler .............................................................................................. 16 1.3 On Korean Drama and the Korean Honorific System .................................................... 17 1.3.1 The Korean Wave and Korean Drama ..................................................................... 18 1.3.2 Korean and its Honorific System ............................................................................. 20 1.4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 25 Chapter 2: Method .................................................................................................................... 27 2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 27 2.2 Method ............................................................................................................................ 27 3.2.1 Extra-linguistic Entities, Procedures and Strategies ................................................ 27 2.2.2 Corpus ...................................................................................................................... 30 2.3 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 32 Chapter 3: Analysis .................................................................................................................. 34 3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 34 3.2 Analysis of Coffee Prince ............................................................................................... 34 3.2.1 Oppa ......................................................................................................................... 34 3.2.2 Hyung ....................................................................................................................... 42 3.2.3 Unni .......................................................................................................................... 47 3.2.4 Noona ....................................................................................................................... 51 3.2.5 Multiple Honorifics .................................................................................................. 54 A COMPARISON OF TRANSLATION PROCEDURES 2 3.3 Conclusion to Coffee Prince ........................................................................................... 56 3.4 Analysis of Reply 1997 ................................................................................................... 57 3.4.1 Oppa ......................................................................................................................... 57 3.4.2 Hyung ....................................................................................................................... 62 3.4.3 Unni .......................................................................................................................... 63 3.4.4 Noona ....................................................................................................................... 64 3.5 Conclusion to Reply 1997 ............................................................................................... 66 4. Discussion and Conclusion ............................................................................................... 68 References ................................................................................................................................ 74 A COMPARISON OF TRANSLATION PROCEDURES 3 Abstract This thesis summarises some of the research done on fansubbing. Most of this research is anime-centred. However, another genre where fansubbing has become common practice is the focus of this thesis, namely Korean drama. One of the characteristics of fansubbing discussed in this thesis is that many fansubbers have appropriated a foreignizing style of subtitling, instead of domesticizing. I suspected that this was true for the fansubbers of Korean drama as well. To investigate whether this was the case, I focussed on one specific aspect of the Korean language, which is the intricate system surrounding Korean honorifics. I chose to focus my analysis on four Korean age-related honorifics, hyung, oppa, noona, and unni and I compared the translation procedures applied to these terms by both amateur and professional subtitlers. I followed Henrik Gottlieb’s method on extra-linguistic entities to classify the translation procedures found in the subtitles as either foreignizing or domesticizing. The fansubs of the first drama, Coffee Prince, contained many foreignizations, while the fansubs of the second drama, Reply 1997, contained fewer foreignizations. This difference may be the result of the increasing amount of legal online streaming sites where fansubbers subtitle Korean dramas for free or it could be coincidence. More research is needed on fansubbing as it cannot yet be said with certainty that the conclusions drawn from anime-related research apply to other genres as well. A COMPARISON OF TRANSLATION PROCEDURES 4 Introduction For the past two decades audiovisual translation has continued to gain scholarly attention. As more and more films, series, documentaries and other audiovisual material is translated, more and more translation scholars are starting to pay attention to this branch of translation studies. Subsequently, this branch has developed as a considerable field of itself. This has resulted in more varied academic attention and within the audiovisual translation branch separate fields of study have come into existence, including that of fansubbing. Fansubbing, also referred to as amateur subtitling or fan subtitling, is a form of subtitling which emerged in the nineties and is has slowly been gaining academic popularity. Most of the research related to fansubbing has been centred on Japanese anime, a Japanese hand-drawn animation. This is not surprising, since this is where the phenomenon of fansubbing originated from. In the nineties, English-speaking fans of Japanese anime took it upon themselves to subtitle anime films and anime series because they were unhappy with the way anime was culturally ‘flattened’ when it was translated into English and released on the American market (Dwyer, 2012, p. 229). At that time amateur subtitling was a time- consuming process, but due to the rise of the Internet this process has become faster and easier, which may have attributed to the spread of fansubbing to other genres. In 2005, translation scholar Matthew Kayahara stated that “other genres will pick up on fansubbing, thus providing a more diverse field of source material to work with” (qtd. in González, 2007, p. 274) and one of these genres is Korean drama. Korean dramas are popular Korean TV shows often consisting of only one season lasting from twelve to twenty episodes. While it is classified as one single genre, the contents can vary greatly. Some dramas, in which school children play the main protagonists, are targeted at teenagers. Yet, there are also dramas that are targeted at a more adult audience where, for example, North Korean spies infiltrate the South Korean government. It is perhaps A COMPARISON OF TRANSLATION PROCEDURES 5 this variety that has resulted in Korean drama becoming a phenomenon which has not only conquered South Korea (henceforth referred to as Korea) itself, but has also swept across the whole of Asia since the middle of the nineties. Since then it has continued to spread around the globe and had accumulated a steady following in South-America, North-America, and most recently in Europe. Naturally, subtitles are needed to facilitate such a growth. Korean dramas are constantly being translated into English, Spanish and many other languages by professional translators, but many are also translated by their fans. Despite their popularity and the growing fansubbing culture surrounding Korean drama, there has been little research on the fansubbing of Korean drama.