번역의 오류 연구

A Study of Errors in Translation - With Particular Emphasis on Korean-into-English Translation

This paper discusses different phenomena with respect to Korean-into-English translations conducted by two groups of undergraduate translation majors. In this study, we compared the translations of Korean-born students who had lived in English-speaking countries such as the United States for more than 3 years with the translations of their peers who had never lived in a country where English is spoken as a native language. The major findings of this study are as follows: (1) Contrary to what was expected, there was only a slight difference in the extent of errors between the two groups in the categories such as Sentential Fragments and Relative Clauses. It can be inferred from this that there exists only an insignificant gap in terms of grammatical skills of English between ESL learners who have lived in English-speaking countries and acquired Anglo-American values, and ESL learners who have not acquired them. (2) The data shows that RS s made a considerably lower proportion of errors in the category of Lexical Transfer than NS s. It is assumed that this is due to RS s advanced language skills supported by the their acquisition of Anglo-American cultural values and pattern of thinking. (3) In the category of Omission, NS s made a higher frequency of omissions than RS s. This data leads to the inference that the translators who have lived in an English-speaking country is speedier in their performance of translation. From the results of this study, it can be hinted that RS s and NS s may be in different morpho-syntactic, lexical, and rhetorical stages. The study suggests that a certain period of residence in an English-speaking country during the formative years has a positive influence on the general levels of English proficiency. As a solution to this situation, and as a step to make the learning environment more acquisition-rich in countries like Korea, this paper proposes that students be allowed to have more access to language immersion programs in which native speakers of English help them acquire Anglo-American cultural values as well as language skills. In the final analysis, we may draw the important pedagogical implication that attention should be paid to strategies of teaching student translators how to handle various Korean sentence structures in the education of translation. It may also be recommenable to use a translation text made up of simple structures first such as the Single Topic category, the easiest to process, and then text materials later including more complex sentential structures in training such as the Embedded and Cleft categories. By providing the students with plenty of examples, they should be able to translate from Korean into English in a speedier, more accurate, and stylish manner in the course of time.