초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Translation of contemporary Korean poetry, especially by female poets, has not yet been widely studied. This paper seeks to analyze how feminist poetry by a Korean female poet is translated or rewritten by a Western translator from the perspectives of structural style and tenor, including mood and appraisal. The text is the award-winning book, 『히스테리아』 by Yideum Kim and its English translation Hysteria, which was translated by a group of translators including Jake Levine. This study compares the ST and the TT to identify differences between them, and conducts an interview with Levine to explore the reasons behind these differences. In terms of style, the translators recreate the structure of the original by dividing stanzas, splitting lines, adding punctuation, and applying capitalization and italicization. With regard to tenor, the translators manipulate the relationship between speakers, increase the intensity and certainty of expressions, and often use terms indicating negative attitudes toward women, including derogatory expletives. They also delete feminine characteristics from the poems on many occasions. The interview with translator Levine reveals that, firstly, such strategies are based on their own creative choices, and linguistic transfer is not their priority; secondly, that they actively engage in rewriting out of respect for the author the desire to create poetry which is as good in English as it is in Korean; and thirdly, that there was a specific request from this particular book’s editors to make the poetry very strong and masculine. This study is especially meaningful because it identifies reasons underlying specific translation strategies directly from one of the translators.
