earticle

영어

The Korean Wave, or Hallyu, has been continuously expanding its scope of influence to move beyond the bounds of the pop culture of Korea, e.g., K-POP, K-FOOD, and K-DRAMA, to include more sophisticated art forms, such as Korean movies and literature. As evidenced by the not-so-short list of Korean authors who have won global literary awards, Korean literature translated into diverse languages has been met with an enthusiastic reception worldwide. Unfortunately, however, research on literary translation has yet to be accumulated accordingly. The present study, a meta-analysis of the research publications during the past two decades until 2022 on Korea’s literary translation, reports on the characteristics of research trends, including key topics and methodologies. The changes in the research foci show that research on outbound translation, or translations from Korean to foreign languages, has outweighed that on inbound translation, or translations into Korean, since 2016, and that ‘the translator,’ the primary agent of translating, tends to receive greater attention accordingly. The comparison between 262 Korean and 362 overseas research articles during the period under review reveals that researchers, Korean and foreign alike, tend to converge on research topics. The core topics of Korean researchers, however, center around ‘linguistic/cultural mediation,’ whereas the most frequent choice among foreign researchers is ‘translation and society,’ which highlights the interdisciplinary nature of research in Translation Studies. The conclusion emphasizes the lack of a critical stance vis-a-vis literary translations in terms of evaluation criteria and a need to strengthen literary translation criticism for a broader reception of Korean literature abroad.