earticle

영어

Indirect translations have a long history, for example, translations of the Bible, and are inevitable to facilitate communication in this fast-expanding, interconnected world. Indirect translations, however, usually have the negative impression of being more distant from the original source text, thus given little attention from academic scholars or focused on in terms of error analysis. In this context, this study aims to identify what strategies have been applied to overcome the bias imposed on indirect translations, paying special attention to loanwords in the renowned Greek novel Zorba the Greek. The novel features many terms and concepts not found in dictionaries, as well as the author’s own idiosyncratic expressions. This poses a big challenge to translators, therefore using loanwords is an effective way to tackle these difficulties. Two versions translated into Korean—a direct translation from the original Greek and an indirect translation from an English translation—are analyzed. The results show that the indirect translation tends to maintain loanwords with less modifications compared to the direct translation, which prefers to alter the exotic and unfamiliar terms and expressions into Korean, especially in translating humor and abstract concepts. These findings suggest that indirect translations adopt a more conservative and safe approach to avoid the risk of mistranslation.