생존의 문화번역과 수키 김의『통역가』

Abstract

This study examines the theories of Walter Benjamin, Tejaswini Niranjana, Rey Chow, and Homi Bhabha to ponder upon literature translation theories of our age. Benjamin breaks up the ontological hierarchy that the original work is the origin and the translation is a derived copy. A relationship of linguistic complementation which aspires pure language exists between the original and the copy. Benjamin’s translation theory which gives weight to language is widely appropriated by cultural translation theorists who deal with contact and negotiation between cultures. Deriving from Benjamin’s translation theories, post-Benjamin translation theorists put forth realistic and at times bellicose cultural translation theories. Niranjana emphasizes the post-colonial historicity of cultural translation and Chow stresses that ‘primitive’ society and the western world are both equally corrupt, decadent participants in contemporary world culture. Bhabha’s concept of translation, which applies Benjamin’s concept of linguistic translation to migrants’ translation, becomes a matter of survival. The cultural translation of the migrant foreign to the existing society is a performative behavior which raises the matter of survival of “how newness enters the world.”When translation transcends beyond the limits of language to cultural translation, it enters into the arena of socio-political power. Suki Kim's The Interpreter shows why a cultural translation which is trans-hierarchical between the original and the copy and is in the perspective of the minority is urgent. Main-stream American society and American government institutions are in the position of the origin which orders and controls immigrants. Thinking that the original is in the stance of owner, they feel that they have the initiative in whether or not to take a tolerant attitude towards foreignness. The Korean immigrants use all their might to translate into the stubborn America. For the immigrant, cultural translation is a cultural translation of survival. On the basis of cultural translation theories, this study examines how cultural translation is one-way and that such one-way cultural translation leads to betrayal. Also, there are diverse differential identities within the immigrant society and when translating becomes impossible, the immigrants become much more vulnerable.