earticle

영어

In recent years, Korean webtoons have been gaining popularity in overseas markets. Accordingly, Naver webtoon, the biggest webtoon platform in Korea, have begun to translate webtoons into various languages. In terms of Chinese translation, two versions are provided for readers in mainland China and Taiwan respectively. This study categorizes the linguistic differences: some words and phrases differ from each other; mainland China uses simplified characters whereas traditional characters are used in Taiwan; a number of sentence-final particles are tend to be used in Taiwan; the ‘-er(儿)’ suffix more often attaches to words in mainland China. Based on these different linguistic features, this paper investigates the translation localization of webtoons by comparing Chinese translation versions of the websites ‘Dongman’ and ‘Line Webtoon’ in mainland China and Taiwan respectively. This study suggests five characteristics of localized webtoon translation. First, some words used differently in everyday dialogues were translated by reflecting cultural differences between mainland China and Taiwan. Second, phonetic symbols of Taiwan were used in translations exclusively. Third, the retroflex suffix expressions were used in the mainland Chinese translation, simply adding ‘er’ onto the end of the original word. Fourth, onomatopoeia and mimetic words were translated differently. Fifth, in terms of translating slangs and profanity expressions, pinyin romanization and regional dialect expressions were used in mainland China and Taiwan respectively.