위태로운 정체성, 횡단하는 경계인-‘여성번역가/번역’ 연구를 위하여-

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to consider the women translators who should be discussed importantly in the history of Korean translation knowledge literature in the 1920s ～ 1930s. There are numerous women translators in the history of Korean translation knowledge literature and among these, the representative translators such as Kim Myeong-soon, Kim ja-hye are to be studied. Since the modern age, women translators have never been properly studied up to now. This is not unrelated to the process, in which Korean women intellectuals in the history of Koean knowledge culture from (Kim Myeong-soon) in the early modern age when there were hardly women intellectuals to (Jeon Hye-rin)in the 1960s when the existence of women translators as intellectuals was concealed under the pretext of anecdotes, were unrecognized. Moreover, the existence of “women translators” could hardly be recognized as “translators” in the cognitive paradigm of Korean history of knowledge in which “translator” was perceived as mere instrumental language conveyer. However, the existence of translators in the 1920s～1930s in which translation occupied the leading position to link places for knowledge should be recognized as the advance guard of knowledge. Particularly, women translators’ actions should be understood as the meaning of recognition struggles in which, despite numerical inferiority, they tried to be recognized as avant-garde intellectuals equally as men. They sometimes tried to have their professionalism recognized by translating the most advanced modern theories ahead of contemporary men and devoted themselves to build new independence by translating women’s liberation theories at the risk of their identities as women. Kim Myeong-soon’s translation of Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire is applicable to the former and Kim Ja-hye’s translation of Red Love is applicable to the latter. And for Kim Myeong-soon, writing was part of translation activities and its process was also the process in which she was fighting with the institution and prejudice that oppressed her. This is the stage in which, culture translation in the true sense of the word in Korean history of literature, and in Lydia Liu’s words,“Translingual Practice,” is attained. If a translator can be regarded as a marginal man crossing other epistemological borders, the very women translators burdened by the alienated identity of “women intellectual” had no choice but to become avant-garde main agents crossing the borders with precarious identity in Korean history of knowledge literature and culture up to now.