내셔널리즘 이전의 인터내셔널 -「월남망국사」의 조선어 번역에 대하여-

Abstract

Translation played a decisive role in the birth of the modern nation. Because translation is a mediation between two linguistic communities, two separate linguistic communities that require a mediation need first to be constructed. Translation in the enlightenment period allowed people to accept without suspicion the existence of irreducible and relative linguistic communities, of a Chôson language that can be translated into Japanese or English. But what we encounter in the process of translation is that there are countless differences between meaning and representations that can’t be consolidated. The reason we have to carry on the work of translating important works like the classics is because of this impossibility of translation. During the modern enlightenment period, because of urgent political and cultural situation, direct translation of intellectual materials produced in the West into Chôson language was not possible. This idea that one language had to be translated into one’s native tongue, the need for Western knowledge to flow in, was itself something unfamiliar. Communication with the reading public was just taking place in 1896 with the newspaper and official communiqués that were beginning to be actively written in Korean. In this milieu, translation could only have come in as a double translation. Even until recently, criticism regarding the inability to translate from the original and the political unsusceptibility of having to obtain translations via Japan was rampant. But if we focus on the fact that double translation did in fact occur repeatedly then we can’t ignore the countless differences that were produced, which does not allow us to return to this or that national language. “The History of the Fall of Vietnam” was criticized for a long time for its role as a definitive double translation. This text, which records in Chinese a conversation between the Vietnamese intellectual Phan Boi Chau and the Chinese intellectual Liang Ch’i Ch’ao in Japan, was translated by Hyun Chae into gookhanmun, a mix script of Korean particles and Chinese characters. The text was translated again by Ju Sikyung into gookmun, a Korean script; and again by Yi Sang-ik into an even simpler narrative style gookmun. It was the first book to be censored as soon as Korea became a colony, and the mostly enthusiastically read underground by activist throughout colonization as a manual. I discuss in my paper the differences that were produced during these repeated process of translation and the imagination of nation and communities these translation produced during the colonial period of 1910. “The History of the Fall of Vietnam”, on the one hand, called for liberation from colonial rule using Vietnam’s fall under France’s rule as a cautionary tale. It also incited Vietnam and Chôson, nations that were excluded from imperial rule, to seek liberation by uniting their forces. We discover with the translations of “The History of the Fall of Vietnam” that translation is not only something that allows us to imagine two linguistic communities but an activity that shows the gap between linguistic communities and the countless differences between languages and lives.