英͵韓語直譯의 問題点과 樣相

The Problems Arising from English-Korean Intertranslation

This paper has attempted to present various forms of linguistic problems arising form English-Korean intertranslation in terms of cultural and linguistic bases. Culturally English- and Korean-speaking people have different ways of thinking, in some cases, stemming from different ways of living. Korean has no counterpart for English ‘legroom,’ while English lacks Korean ‘책상다리’ (sitting with one’s legs crossed as in Buddhist statues). In English we say “Early to bed and early to rise,” but in Korean we say it conversely. In lexicon we find identical expressions like ‘fight disease,’ ‘crybaby,’ or semantically identical but formally different expressions like ‘housewarming (party),’ ‘hot hand’ (skillful or successful hand), or semantically misunderstood words like ‘gang,’ ‘guys,’ both of which are usually interpreted only pejoratively in Korean. On sentence level problems arise from both structural and conventional differences of English and Korean. For instance, English “Do I know you?” or Korean “그만 들어 가거라” (on telephone “I guess that’s about it”; literally “Please withdraw.”) In passive expressions English has much encroached upon Korean, which employs passive expressions much less, introducing a number of awkward expressions. This paper has never intended to be exhaustive in either collecting relevant materials or analyzing them.