남북한 조선왕조실록 번역 비교 - 『현종실록』을 중심으로 -

Abstract

The Annals of the Chosŏn Dynasty of South Korea and the Annals of Yi Dynasty of North Korea were a large collection of historic documents that were separately translated by each from the same text. The purpose of this paper is to examine the principles of translation of true historical records of South and North Korea focusing on the translation examples of the Veritable Records of Hyeonjong and is also to study on similarities and differences presented in the sentences and vocabularies between two different versions. The main principle of the translation was that South and North Korea tried to retain its original form of true historical records. Both the amendment of annals and the revised annals were also regarded as separate versions and translated following an original form. The big difference in translation had to do with the use of Chinese characters and Sino-Korean words. In the principle of mix-up of Korean and Chinese characters, Korean proper names and historical vocabularies were juxtaposed with Chinese characters, and Sino-Koreans words were frequently employed in South Korean translation. In contrast, in the principle of the writing in plain language, proper names were not followed by Chinese characters at all, and the historical vocabularies were explained lucidly as far as possible in the North Korean one. Under such different principles, the usage of footnote of each translation was also influenced. In the South version, footnote was added as annotations centered on old histories, and a brief account of a certain vocabulary was put in parenthesis. In the North version, footnote was not provided at all. Both South and North Korea arranged and listed the errors of original text in the tabulated form. There were sharp differences in the use of vocabularies. While the South translation used historical vocabularies as they are, and some of them were given an explanation and put in parenthesis. In the North translation, almost every vocabulary was explained in a lucid way under the same principle of plain language. In this sense, the translation by the South had some difficulties in figuring out the meaning partly due to its use of hard vocabularies to understand without any explanations. On the contrary to this, it was not taken into account that even same vocabularies in the differentiated context could have different meaning and be deviated from original intention owing to its too explanatory way. There will be a broad distinction from the translation of the present day, for The Veritable Records of Hyeonjong was translated by the South and the North 20 years ago. However, unless basic elements in translation are dramatically changed, comparing the South and North Korean translation of historical documents will have its significance for the translation work. If accuracy is essential to the process of translation, unity is directly connected with availability of the translation. In this respect, this academic study will hopefully help prepare the joint translation between the South and North Korea.