시간 극복으로서의 번역과 공동체 문화의 계승 - 김광순 소장 필사본 고소설 100선 출간의 의미

Abstract

Translation has two layers of meaning. Even though the target language is Korean, there are two cases when the source language is either a foreign language or archaic Korean. When the source language is a foreign language, the primary goal of translation is to overcome space, but when the source language is archaic Korean, the goal of translation is to overcome time. It is this difficult task of translating the Korean language of the past into the modern language, that those who translate Korean classics face. In the area of Korean classical novels, there has been activity for a long time in finding new materials and conducting studies, but collecting data on a large scale has not been done properly. The recently published <Professor Kim Kwang Soon’s Collection of 100 Manuscripts of Korean Classic Novels>, in this regard, marks a new milestone in research on Korean classical novels. It is very rare that one person individually collects a vast amount of data, and in addition to the collected material, there are a number of new works that were previously unknown. It is a great achievement in the realm of academia that many researchers of Korean classical novels have teamed up to work on making comments and annotations on these collected works, and to finally add their modern translations so that readers today can also appreciate them. Through this kind of work, we can expect that new research on Korean classical novels will be greatly stimulated and that many readers will have the opportunity to enjoy the Korean classics. Moreover, it also helps the numerous material on Korean classical novels to be built up in an archive, which provides the chance for the collected materials to be utilized in various fields. These materials have profound significance in that they preserve the culture shared by our community now for the next generation.