번역가 김억과 임학수의 머리말－한시와 영문학 번역 계보의 성립 배경－

Abstract

A preface of a translator includes not only implications and historical values of the translation, but also inherent voices of translating agents. During the Japanese colonial period, the translator exhibited the motivations and reasons of the translation and introduced the contemporary literary thoughts or new terms and concepts in the preface. In addition, it was used as the place where the translator presented his original translation theory and attempted to communicate with readers. For the anthologies of translated poems published during the Japanese colonial period, the number of translators was limited with the lowest achievement of book publication. The anthologies edited by Kim Eok and Im Hak-su exhibited more distinct consciousness and consistency of translation than any other ones. A poet, Kim Eok who had played a leading role in the early modern literature, translated the largest scale of poems during the Japanese colonial period. Im Hak-su, the last editor of anthology during the Japanese colonial period, who translated contemporary English poetries, acquired expertise through the translation of English literary canon. The voices of translators can be illuminated and the background on which the history of the translation of Han-si (Chinese or Sino-Korean poetry) and English literature has been established may be re-evaluated, by examining Kim Eok and Im Hak-su, who achieved prominent performances in the genealogy of anthology of translated poems. Kim Eok performed the practice of translation, while stating the specific methodology of translation on the preface in his collection of poems. Kim Eok who was focused on an independent value of the translated poems consistently put an emphasis on creativity and individualistic free translation in poetry translation as well as discerning eyes and tastes of readers. Since the mid-1930s, Kim Eok’s translation theory, which had focused on the translation of Han-sis (Chinese or Sino-Korean poetries) written by female poets, became a basis on which heritages of Chinese classics or Sino-Korean poetries could be captured from the perspectives of foreign literatures and reevaluation of the canon and experimentation of a new type of poetry were also conducted. Meanwhile, it was a rare case that Im Hak-su who translated contemporary English poems grew into a professional translator while concentrating on the canon of 19th century English literatures. Living in the 1940s, before and after the 1945 Liberation, Im Hak-su understood the historicity of translation through English literary canon and contemporary Anglo American literature and also achieved substantial performances distinguished from those by Hae-woe-mun-hak-pa (the school of foreign literature). The consistent and focused translation practiced by Im Hak-su was inherited to study and translation of English literature in North Korea after the partition of Korean peninsula.