The Translation and Appropriation of Chick Lit in Korea

The translations of a particular genre of British and American popular literature called the Chick lit are examined in this study. An analysis into the macro-level features of the translations revealed that the cultural references in the English source texts frequently were mostly transliterated into Korean. These foreign text elements, which include in the translation of cultural-specific concepts, artifacts and brands, are translated by means of strategies such as borrowing and transference and transliteration dominate a great part of the translated texts. In some cases, an explanatory footnote is added to make the meaning of the borrowed item clearer. However, on the whole, the translation problems were more or less successfully solved and the resulting Korean version is accessible to the average reader inasmuch as the footnotes give a great help in order to understand or become acquainted with cultural knowledge specific to the British or American context. The study also attempts to provide an examination of the appropriation of this genre into a Korean version of Chick lit using the polysystem theory formulated by Even-Zohar. There are visible new trends in the recent works that are being published by Korean women writers that a new genre has been introduced to a country in a definitive manner and its initial influence may be said to be traceable to the Korean translations of British and American Chick lit.