말뭉치를 활용한 ‘by’의 번역투 연구

Abstract

A translated text sometimes shows unique characteristics that readers think that the text is a translated one instead of an originally created(non-translated) one. The reader senses that he/she is reading a translation when they find the text clumsy or unidiomatic. This phenomenon is called 'translationese', a term often used in discussing the qualities of translation. It is different from 'errors' of translation. That two language systems are different from each other accounts for the existence of translationese. When translationese is analysed and alternatives to translationese are suggested, the quality of translation will be improved. So this study aims at analyzing translationese of 'by', an agent marker in a passive sentence, found in translation from English into Korean. Monolingual corpus and parallel corpus are used for the study. The results of this study are as follows: First, translationese comes mainly from word-for-word or literal translation without considering the difference between the two languages, in terms of lexical items, syntactic structures, pragmatic and idiomatic usages, etc.. Second, the frequency of an expression considered translationese in the case of translating 'by' is approximately 30% higher in translated texts than in original texts. It means that generally translators tend to be stuck in a representative expression for words. Third, experts in translating are apt to interpret a word into as many different meanings as possible on the basis of the given contexts and collocations. In the case of translating 'by', they have translated it in 27 different ways including omission. Therefore, this study suggests that translationese can be reduced by having exact and comprehensive knowledge of the two languages, by avoiding a word-for-word or literal translation method, and by trying to find alternatives which are more appropriate to the given situation.