한/영 의문사 의문문의 통ㆍ번역

Translating Korean Wh-Questions into English

In this paper I discuss Korean into English translation problems that may arise due to the syntactic differences between these languages. My particular focus concerns on differences in wh-questions. Unlike English, wh-phrases need not move to the beginning of Korean sentences. When there are multiple wh-phrases in an English sentence, one wh-phrase must move to the beginning of the sentence, the others remaining in-situ. A wh-phrase must be at the beginning of every English sentence. There are also other constraints on its movement that must not be violated. If a wh-phrase violates a constraint in the course of its movement in English sentences, it results in ungrammaticality. If translators are not familiar with the constraints on English wh-movements, they may make errors translating Korean wh-questions into English. To avoid such errors it is important for Korean into English translators to know the differences in the syntactic properties of Korean and English wh-questions which appear to be of a similar type. It is also necessary for translators to recognize the unique syntactic properties of wh-questions, particularly those which may differ from language to language.