Version 2 2019-11-22, 04:26Version 2 2019-11-22, 04:26
Version 1 2017-05-18, 04:20Version 1 2017-05-18, 04:20
thesis
posted on 2019-11-22, 04:26authored byHyun-Jun Roh
Down and Out in Paris and London is a work of memoir by
George Orwell in 1933. It provides realistic reportage style commentary with a sentiment
of social criticism. Down and Out has been translated into Korean three times
over a period of 18 years, which is unusual for a literary text less popular
than Orwell’s other works. These three translated texts are different from each
other in terms of style, translators’ affiliations to Orwell, and level of
localisation. This thesis investigates the literary features of Down and Out in
Paris and London, and compares the approaches taken by Korean translators to
represent key source text elements in the target texts. It identifies important
shifts over the course of time in the translators’ approaches at textual and
contextual level, and relates these shifts to the rapid globalisation of South
Korean society in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In contrast,
translators’ understanding of social dynamics is found to remain relatively
static across the three translations. This analysis contributes to
understandings of how translators interpret context. Interpretation of context
does not mean seeking equivalence between the source text and target text in
translation activity. Rather, it is about identifying indicators of core
message in the source text, weaving patterns and inter-connectivity between key
elements in the source text, and representing them according to the prevailing,
and constantly changing, norms of the target culture.