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영어

This study analyzes the Japanese translation of Han Kang’s Human Acts, focusing not on shifts in grammatical person per se but on the narrative voice constructed through person choice and its ethical effects. While analytically distinguishing narrator and focalization, the study adopts voice as its central concept and examines how person choices in each chapter position the reader. The analysis shows that the novel consistently employs narrator invisibility while carefully modulating narrative voice through choices of person. In Chapters 1 and 5, second-person pronouns refer to specific characters, yet the narrating subject remains unresolved, suspending reader identification and maintaining ethical distance. After the explicit appearance of Jeongdae’s spirit as a first-person narrator in Chapter 2, these configurations invite retroactive interpretation, but the text deliberately resists fixing the narrator. The Japanese translation renders this structure visible through socially and pragmatically marked pronouns such as kimi, boku, watashi, anata, kāchan, and omae. This study argues that translation here functions as an ethical mode of communication, positioning the reader as a reflective subject engaged with memory and responsibility rather than emotional identification.