번역자의 역할에 관한 철학적 사유를 위한 소고(小考)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to answer the question, ‘how can we define the ultimate goal of translation studies, if we are allowed to discuss it metaphysically?’ To answer the question, this paper identifies periodical implications and universal values of a current translation methodology that were inherited from traditional hermeneutics. As philosophical hermeneutics has developed, it has shown that interpretation is one way of understanding and readers understand a text based on their preunderstanding. Paul Ricoeur expanded the scope of text hermeneutics to translation, and proposed the notion of ‘linguistic hospitality’ as an attempt to tackle the issue of untranslatable texts, which is one of the main subjects in translation studies. As a first reader, a translator meets a text and then creates a new product, a translated work. It can be the most ideal translation for a translator to harmonize unique characteristics of a source language with those of a target language, especially when the two languages are not compatible with each other. The process of adapting the characteristics of a native language to those of another language is similar to offering a hospitality of a different culture. Through the process, the understanding of two different cultures is broaden and when linguistic hospitality is added to this, the better quality of translation is finally obtained, albeit not a perfect one. Ricoeur notes that reader’s identity can be established by a text-reading. Based on his perspective, this paper argues that a problem of translation can extend to a discourse on identity of a translator, assuming that the translator is the first reader of a text. In this sense, it is also reasonable to discuss the translator’s identity when addressing a problem of translation. This argument is also supported by ‘the death of the author’ proposed by Roland Barthes’ (French writer and philosopher). He focuses on the fact that readers can reinterpret an original text, and by employing his viewpoint, this paper argues that a role of translator that has been hidden by the original authorship (in Venuti’s terminology) can be extended. When escaping from the perspective of a modernist that places emphasis on the author and then giving a translator an independent hermeneutic space, it is believed that translation studies should stand alone as one independent academic field.