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영어

Historical approaches of translation and interpreting studies havevariously underscored the cultural, political and diplomatic aspectsof the role of interpreters and translators. However, one of the mostimportant duties for the official interpreters called yeokgwan duringKorea’s Joseon dynasty (1392- 1910), especially in the 2nd half of that era, was to oversee official trade with the Chinese Court (Qing)and the Japanese Empire. Parallel to their official duties they wereallowed to trade privately since they travelled to China and Japan asdelegation members. Under the rigid social orders – the bureaucratsand literati yangban, the middlemen jungin to which yeokgwanbelonged, the commoners and the lowest in one the one hand, andthe strict Confucian social rank in the order of scholars, farmers,artisans and tradesmen on the other, yeokgwan were able toaccumulate wealth, which helped them to advance themselvessocially by devoting themselves to literary works and building uptheir jungin and specifically, yeokgwan networks e.g. by marriages. On that basis, interpreters gradually enhanced their social status andpolitical power even as the social order became unstable towards theend of Joseon dynasty. This paper aims at illustrating the evolutionof the official interpreters during the 2nd half of the Joseon dynasty(i.e. 17-19th Century) by drawing upon translated historical sourceslike Tongmungwanji (handbooks for official interpreters), the annalsof Joseon dynasty and previous research in Korean studies.