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영어

This paper argues for an enlarged translation criticism that brings literary criticism into its fold. To make this possible, a non-evaluative approach to translation criticism is proposed utilizing three principles: first, the principle of recovery references Paul Ricoeur’s idea that translation is about remembering and mourning to argue that there are things lost in translation worth recovering; second, the principle of charity assumes that what is translated is the best of all possible translations so as to unencumber the critic in doing the work of literary criticism; third, the principle of significance states that what is deemed worthy of recovery should be narratively meaningful. To illustrate how these principles can work in practice, two problematic cases of literary translation are analyzed using Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom as text. The first case, which involves references to seasons that are omitted in the target text, is used to show how such translation shifts are handled differently within the framework of a non-evaluative translation criticism in contrast to evaluation. In justifying their recovery, it is suggested that the omitted seasonal references express Mom’s voice, which can be viewed as representing nature and cyclicality in the novel. The second case, an obligatory linguistic shift that conflates two different narrative voices in the novel, is used to expand the analysis of cyclicality to include the concept of true cyclicality. Mom’s final moment in Please Look After Mom is then discussed as a rare of example of true cyclicality of time in narrative. It is hoped that this paper’s non-evaluative approach to translation criticism will open the door for translators, scholars and educators to also become literary critics.