하이쿠(俳句)표현과 그 한국어역

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to explore - 1) the western view of haiku as a literary form, 2) western contributions to haiku research resulting from a recent surge of interest, 3) western understanding of the essence of haiku, 4) the need for an absolute rhetoric when composing haiku, 5) the use of kigo and kirezi as both stylistic elements and impediments to direct translation, 6) the linguistic and culture-based barriers to translating and interpreting haiku by all readers and 7) the particular stylistic and referential elements that can and cannot be translated readily into Korean. They break the flow of meaning in haiku and require the reader to be culturally and linguistically knowledgeable enough to infer the associated, corollary vocabulary needed to sustain the imagery and, thus, the meaning. The true meaning of a haiku may be so deeply embedded in language and cultural nuances that a foreign reader may not be able to grasp the essence of the work as concisely as written. Thus, a single line of haiku may result in three lines of text in another language. As for the problem of perfect translation of haiku into Korean, I identified problem areas that preclude such directionality, compared translation methods and, by comparing those methods, isolated two basic groups of elements that can be readily translated into Korean and one that cannot. Kigo and kirezi comprise the first group with kirezi breaks being the more difficult to express. The latter two groups, which require judicious annotation, are 1) homonyms and 2) culturally specific content that includes (a) historic proper nouns, (b) historically significant persons and places, c) almanac and dietary references and (d) general and specific knowledge about Japan. I also attempted to translate examples of each group considering the communicative impossibility of bridging the meaning gap. Lastly, I questioned the value of translation at all.