조선시대 결송입안 번역의 현황과 과제

Abstract

Two years have passed since the translation project team took charge of the project that it must complete by June 2019. The team has submitted its first annual report (list no. 1 through no. 30) in June 2017 and its second annual report (list no. 31 through no. 57) in June 2018. As a research leader of the team, I wrote this paper in order to receive useful feedback on the difficulties encountered by our team on a daily basis. In Section 1, I argued that the translation problem did not entail translating difficult Chinese language sentences into highly readable text, but it is a question of how to translate the source document into a “plain and concise modern style”. In Section 2, I summarized the brief history of the translation of the Joseon dynasty’s civil court records into eight items. In Section 3, I analyzed the full text-type records and the summary-type records in comparison with the composition of modern Korean civil court decisions. In Section 4, I showed three typical problems which the translation project team frequently faced. In Section 5, I presented a tentative conclusion based on the experience gained during the past two years of hard work. My conclusion is as follows: First, we should review all 73 court records chosen by our team and read them over repeatedly. The more it is read over and over, the better we can grasp the meaning of the text. Second, although not included in the list of 73 court records, it is necessasary to search new relevant data. The more samples we read, the more likely we are to choose a good translation. Third, while the policy of respecting the original text is still important, performing a contextual adjustment is unavoidable from time to time. Fourth, attention should be paid towards deepening our knowledge about the civil court records of the Joseon dynasty. [Key words] civil court records, full text-type record, summary-type record, regulation of making civil court decision, the policy of respecting the original text