선교사 게일의 번역 문체에 관하여 -천로역정 번역을 중심으로-

Abstract

This article aims to explain the stylistic characteristics of Korean translations by a Canadian missionary in Korea, James Scarth Gale [1863-1937], focusing on his translation of a religious novel, The Pilgrim's Progress [originally published in London in 1678]. Gale translated the novel into Korean using a Chinese translation of the original text. The previous studies on Gale's translation works mainly dealt with his Korean translation of the Bible. However, by taking up the translation of the religious novel and by analyzing the characteristics of his style in this translated novel, I would like to attempt to reconsider the development of a translation style in the early missionary times in Korea, as an extension of the history of pre-modern Korean literature. I first proved that the original Chinese text, on which the Korean version published in 1895 was based, was not in a ‘literary (wenyan) translation’ but in a ‘Mandarin translation.’ Such use of Mandarin translations led to translations of ‘vernacular novels’ into Korean hangul adaptation novels. It allowed the reader to smoothly proceed with the Korean translated versions without having any awkward impression as well as the translator to save time and effort. However, in those secondhand translations from Mandarin translations, conceptual terms for the Christian doctrine and names of people and places were given in the hangul alphabet as phonetic transcriptions of Chinese words read in the Korean pronunciation. This Chinese-derived reading affected the style of writing. Missionaries in Korea including Gale tried to have a style particularly suited for hangul, nevertheless, these Chinese-derived words inevitably brought a style similar to the Chinese writing. It was also difficult to associate the hangul notations alone with the ideas of the Christian doctrine. Gale understood the limitation of the style of writing exclusively in hangul, and in his efforts to establish a Korean translation style, he attempted the mixed use of Chinese character and hangul and also revision of hangul spellings. The style seen in Gale's Korean translation of The Pilgrim's Progress should be reevaluated from such point of view. As reviewed so far, in order to study translation styles in the early missionary times in Korea, it is important to pay attention to the course of history in which the propagation of Christianity in East Asia first started in China. The fact the translation of Christian texts in Korea began with secondhand translations from Chinese versions suggests that the development of the translation style in Korea proceeded as an extension of the history of pre-modern literature in the Chinese letter based East Asian cultural sphere.