1950년대 번역가의 의식과 문화정치적 위치

Abstract

This study examined the consciousness of translators, the main entities in the domain of translation, and their cultural and political positions through inquiring into discussions about translations in the 1950s. Translations in the 1950s, the post-war national rehabilitation period, were media necessary to adopt modern knowledge of the West under the banner of Europeanism, liberal democracy, and anti-Communism. The translation policy raised urgently in the fervent hope of escaping from the status of a backward country brought about massive production of translated books and translation texts under the supports from the cultural policy of the United States which tried to mould the cultural consciousness system of Korea. As many intellectuals were mobilized to implement this policy, translators in the new intellectual profession began their activities. In the early stages, literary persons who belonged to the highest intellectual class were active as translators, and then after the establishment of the university system, the number of those who majored in foreign literature increased, and the group of translators was divided into writer translators and professor translators. Within this framework, diverse discussions such as literal translation/retranslation /translation from original text or formation of translation language were made and gradually translation theories and the consciousness of translators began to be established. In this process, the translators tried to escape from the stigma of ‘technician’ and obtained the pride of avant-garde unit to accommodate the new modern civilization. It was in this context that they were called ‘translation writers’ instead of ‘literature translators.’ As consciousness about translation grew and translators began to agonize over their identity, the translation criticism was made possible, and in this process discussions on translation were also being specialized. And the translators agonized over translation attitude in consideration of the circumstances of Korea at that time, and they came to present the importance of translation projects necessary from the viewpoint of ‘national situation.’ As a result, the contact point of cosmopolitanism, the most important keyword in the 1950s and the nationalistic recognition was formed by the translators. Such circumstances of the translators are scenes that show how the postwar anti-Communism and the nationalistic consciousness encounter the cosmopolitanism, i.e. Europeanism. It is because the phenomenon in which they struggle for their self- recognition on the basis of contribution to national culture and the properties of translators who can hardly become nationalists, based on what goes in and out of languages and essentially on cosmopolitanism, is generated, based on the special cultural and political basis in the 1950s. In other words, it shows the fact that the cosmopolitanism was not spiritual pursuit in the genuine sense that recognizes and accommodates others, but a mere Europeanism and that severe obsession with anti-Communism and nationalistic consciousness existed at that time.