번역을 통한 근대 지성의 유통과 젠더 담론 -『여원』을 중심으로-

Abstract

This Study aims to review, from a point of gender, the mechanics of communication in which 'translation' sutured the differences and was circulated through and adopted by the public,through the translation literature carried in the monthly magazine 'YeoWon'. The translation literature carried in 'YeoWon' can be classified into novels, memoirs, biographies of great person, fairy tales mostly from Western countries such as USA, UK, France, Germany,Denmark, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia, South America such as Guatemala, Brazil, Chile and Asia such as China, Japan etc. This translation literature was diverse from 17th century Ching Dynasty stories to modern literature of 1950th, 1960th and 1970th. It could be understood that such a various translation literature in 'YeoWon' has made active transfer, variation and mutation in a wide range of space and time. Even though the readers of 'YeoWon' were limited to women,30,000 copies were sold monthly and became very popular in 1960th, recording the second rank among all magazines published in Korea. 'YeoWon''s popularity had the close relationship with the increase of the desire for the book purchase due to the 'Reading Week Event' made by the libraries from 1954 and the governmental movement of reading initiated by the Ministry of Culture & Education and the Library Association from 1957. Thanks to such a reading movement, 'YeoWon' could be regarded as a 'good book' requiring the higher academic condition in spite of its character of commercial and public magazine. 'Yeowon' was treated as the cultural book and a kind of required reading book for higher level women. Years of 1950s to 1970s when 'YeoWon' was published were the time during which discussions occurred on woman's position and role under the concept of 'equality'. But most translated novels showed some features such as 'sacrifice' or 'endurance' in order for women to be treated as the same as the men. It means that the translated novels were not closely linked with the real world. What was pursued by 'YeoWon' was not individual happiness under the gender culture but women's roles under the totality for the construction of new Korea. Years 1950s～1970s were the era of re-construction after the Korean war. The necessity of re-construction triggered the desire for the new nation followed by the desire of various information towards the world. While people's traditional culture and the sense of value were no longer treated as a 'role model' or 'direction of life', 'translation' done by 'YeoWon'caused the expectation of change from tradition to modernity, from aboriginality to foreignism. As one knows well, translation means an activity of creating the new meaning along the 'context' after understanding the cultural meaning inside the foreigner's language, behavior and sense of value etc. While translation is an act of translating the original into another language, the object of translation is not the language but the potential inside the original work. Accordingly, the problem of translated version's heterogeneity and difference can be solved by the development of new communication model capable of overcoming this problem and leading the mutual communication and exchange. Looking at 'YeoWon' in this regard, one recognizes that the translation literature carried in this magazine could not make the development of new communication model capable of groping the liberation by finding the potential inside the original version and rather played a role to leave women inside the remain by coating the existing social order and meaning order with modernity and concreting them. Specially, the translation literature in 'YeoWon'promoted to give up womanhood and to go to the symbolic meaning of wife and mother immediately after the marriage. Therefore, woman's body could not be regarded as the thing to pretty up or to look for pleasure, but the functional thing to use for house work and child care. In some way, the conservativeness of 'YeoWon' became a useful guidepost to meet the strange heterogeneity without a external wound by giving women the sense of stability keeping the pyschological shelter which had protected them so far.