문화재청 홈페이지의 국보 명칭 영문 번역 고찰

Abstract

As the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea(CHAK) is a government organization, this paper begins with the examination of the papers which dealt with the translation situation of the public organizations. The examination of the present situation of the homepage of the CHAK shows that they are not paying a proper attention to the management of it. Because the method of translating the vocabulary which contains cultural elements, that is culture specific items in Aixelá,’s words, is not yet studied systematically and there is not an authoritative translation strategy, it is difficult to decide the translation method of the titles of the national treasures. In the homepage of the CHAK, the titles of the national treasures are translated according to the rule of phonetic representation and footnotes are given in parenthesis. When the footnotes of the titles of the national treasures are examined, many errors are discovered in the vocabulary, grammatical structure, and the contents. It seems that because the titles themselves are difficult to understand and very long, errors were easily made. In conclusion, I suggest four things. First, translating cultural properties, the translators should work together with cultural properties specialists. Second, before the translation is publicized, the draft should be supervised by English native speakers. The supervisors should review the draft and correct grammatical errors and suggest vocabulary which average English speakers can understand. Third, they should develop a system to study the translation theories of cultural properties in universities and other institutions. Fourth, such public organizations as the CHAK should hire competent translators and make them study and translate the cultural properties.