훈민정음 언해는 ‘언어 내 번역’인가?

Is Hunmimjeongeumeonhae a kind of Intra-lingual Translation?

This paper has discussed Kim Wook Dong’s argument of ‘Hunminjeongeum Eonhae is intra-lingual translation’ (2010: 261-270). The author considers it in the negative sense. The reason is as follows: The source language of Eonhae is Chinese characters and its target language is Korean. And the intra-lingual translation occurs when SL and TL are identical. Therefore, if Eonhae is to be an intra-lingual translation, the SL or Chinese characters and the TL or the Korean should be the same. The Kim’s false argument originates from his confusion of language style and language itself. In other words, Kim (2010) believes that there existed a language with two varieties in the late middle Korean. The co-existence of language styles cannot automatically guarantee that the two should belong to a same language. The written Chinese is still a foreign language which originally represents the spoken Chinese, and it cannot be the same language as Korean. In its final analysis Kim’s argument of ‘Hunminjeongeum Eonhae or Eonhae is intra-lingual translation’ (2010: 261-270) has been based on insufficient evidence, and it should be revised as ‘Hunminjeongeum Eonhae or Eonhae is inter-lingual translation.’