[KS] 100 Year History of Translation in Korea
Frank M. Tedesco
tedesco at uriel.net
Fri Jul 3 10:36:15 EDT 1998
> Kim Byung-chul Sums Up 100-Year
> History of Translation in Korea
> 07/02(¸ñ) 15:23
>
> By Yang Sung-jin
>
> Staff Reporter
>
> Making a list, whatever its theme may be, is likely to be
> time-consuming. So is collecting information about as many as
> 300,000 books formerly published in Korea. Yet a former
> English literature professor completed the daunting task _
> and he did it with only one eye.
>
> Kim Byung-chul, honorary professor of ChungAng University,
> has wrapped up a six-volume series under the general
title `History of World Literature in Korea'' by recently
adding two more books _ ``History of Translation in Contemporary
> Korea (I) , (II).''
>
> ``In making the lists of the books translated into
Korean, the most difficult part was collecting basic materials.
Many of the books I had to check were simply unavailable,
or I was turned down by the private collectors who possess the
> books,'' intoned Kim in an interview with The Korea Times
> Tuesday.
>
> Difficult as it is, the reward is sweeter than ever. Kim's
> unprecedented project, which started in 1975 by publishing
> the first installment of the series, covers the 100-year
> history of the Korean publishing sector between 1885 and
> 1985, providing valuable hints about the intellectual
> landscape of the nation.
>
> There was a price for his efforts, though. In 1974, just one
> year ahead of the publication of the first installment of the
> series, Kim's health worsened as he excessively strained to
> read all the microfiche-format materials he brought from
> China and Japan. As a result, he lost sight in his right eye.
>
> The unfortunate loss, however, could not stop Kim from
> hopping from university libraries to publishers to local
> museums in search of books, which resulted in the eye-opening
> number of tomes he combed through.
>
> Also noticeable in Kim's work is their comprehensiveness. Not
> only the books translated from English and American
> literature, but also all the titles translated from world
> literature including French, German, Russian, Chinese and
> Japanese literatures are covered along with detailed
> information about authors, publishers and translators.
>
> In 1973, he stayed in Japan for nine months, searching out
> books related to the Korean version. These books he
> researched in Japan, which were in most cases translated into
> Japanese from foreign languages, provided a basis on which
> Kim built his perspective about the literary trends in Korea.
>
> ``When I was tracing Tolstoi's `Resurrection,' I was shocked
> to know that it was translated into Korean with a strange
> title of `Sweet Brier.' The truth was that the ridiculously
> short 25-page Korean version was based on the Japanese
> version, which was also a rough translation of the
> original,'' Kim recalled.
>
> As Tolstoi's masterful work was reduced to a shallow
> pocketbook, most translations of world literature in Korea in
> the early 20th century were distorted, thanks to the highly
> compact Japanese versions, on which Korean translators
> depended as the one and only source.
>
> In fact, there were few Korean scholars who could command
> competent foreign languages. Meanwhile, a big chunk of
> intellectuals were educated under the Japanese colonial rule,
> which forced them to use the Japanese version as the primary
> source in translating foreign literature in Korean.
> Inevitably, such ``multiple filtering'' degraded the quality
> of translation.
>
> In the 1960s, publishers and translators began to work on the
> original works as a source for their publication of foreign
> literature, Kim said.
>
> ``The most remarkable period in the Korean publication
> sector, particularly involving the books translated from
> foreign literature is the 1970s when the volume of translated
> works literally exploded, due to the social atmosphere in
> favor of absorbing foreign literature,'' Kim explained.
>
> But the booming era wound down as the publishers increasingly
> found it hard to find new foreign titles or so-called ``World
> Masterpieces'' to translate. ``Since the 1980s, the
> translation of foreign books has been on decline,'' Kim said.
>
> The most favorite author for Korean publishers turned out to
> be Hermann Hesse, whose works have common ground with the
> oriental way of thinking. Other top writers who scored most
> in terms of their works translated into Korean include Ernest
> Hemmingway, Goethe and Tagore.
>
> Kim himself contributed to placing Hemmingway at the list of
> top foreign writers by translating all his works into Korean,
> publishing a biography and extensive criticism.
>
> He came to read Hemmingway's novels when he was peddling
> radishes in the southeastern port city of Pusan during the
> Korean War. ``At that time, I had to buy the radishes at the
> market in early morning and wait until four o'clock in the
> afternoon when people began to pass by in front of my stuffs.
> So, I bought the cheap pocketbooks and read them for hours
> every day,'' Kim said.
>
> The introduction to Hemmingway's literary world eventually
> led Kim to further his interest in English literature. While
> teaching at ChungAng University, Kim completed the
> translation of Hemmingway's works and wrote numerous
> criticism.
>
> ``But I felt emptiness after I finished the work on
> Hemmingway. Perhaps, there's nothing original in writing some
> criticism based on foreign literary theory and some quotes
> from foreign journals,'' Kim said.
>
> It was a lingering piece of advice from his former teacher
> that prompted Kim to find something original, something
> unique.
>
> ``My middle school teacher was Sok Ju-myong, who became
> pretty famous later as an expert on butterflies. He used to
> tell us that a success is guaranteed if one does something
> other people don't want to do for 10 years,'' Kim recalled.
>
> Initially, Kim started his project, bearing in mind the
> 10-year-study idea, while ending up compiling the lists about
> the translated books for 23 years. In such a time-consuming
> process, however, Kim learned something that uniquely
> undermined the Korean publishing sector at large.
>
> ``Leafing through the books published in the early 20th
> century at one point, I found that Korean libraries totally
> neglected preserving books because it's really difficult to
> find the books published here. In contrast, major libraries
> in Japan own almost all the the books published and
> translated there,'' Kim said.
>
> Kim also lamented that some irresponsible publishers still
> resort to shoddy translations of foreign literature to get
> rich quick, while cheating overworked translators.
>
> ``Trying to do something quickly is not a right attitude,''
> said Kim, who finished off his decades-long project only
> recently.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> (C) COPYRIGHT 1998 THE HANKOOKILBO
Http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/14_6/9807/t4651216.htm
--
Frank Tedesco, Ph.D.
Occasional lecturer, University of Maryland
Assistant Professor
Sejong University
98 Kunjadong, Kwangjin-gu
Seoul 143-747 KOREA
Tel/fax: 82-2-997-3954
E-mail: tedesco at uriel.net
"Life is a terminal disease, and it's sexually transmitted."
John Cleese, the Buddhist.
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