earticle

영어

The purpose of this paper is to find out whether the sentence topics of the English originals are translated into sentence topics in their Korean translations and explain what causes changes, if any, in the translations. Topics are identified in relation to sentence types: topic-comment, identification, event-reporting, presentational, and topicalized sentences. A total of 480 clauses from The Grapes of Wrath, and Great Gatsby and their corresponding clauses from the Korean translations are analysed. Ninety percent of the topics of the topic-comment sentences and eighty-six percent of those of thetic (event-reporting and presentational) sentences in the originals are found to be translated into sentence topics in the translations. Two main factors causing changes in the translations are the presence of inanimate subject sentences in the originals and thematization in translations. Thematization is seen as a result of pragmatic structuring of the author's communicative intention in accordance with the syntactic structure of the target language. Translations of inanimate subject sentences can also be understood in relation to the acceptability of the information states of the inanimate subjects, but more intensive study is required to confirm their relationship.