엘리엇 시의 번역에 대하여

The Current State of Korean Translation of T. S. Eliot’s Poems

The purpose of this paper is to assess the current state of T. S. Eliot’s poems in Korean translation. Academic research on Eliot by Korean scholars began in 1945, and so far three generations of scholars have actively engaged in Eliot studies and translations of his works. However, based on my examination of nearly all of the Korean translations of the quoted verse lines appearing in the Journal of the T. S. Eliot Society of Korea between 2006 and 2008, and Studies in Modern British and American Poetry (2008), I argue that translation endeavors by the second and third generation scholars have not yielded satisfactory results and that the senior group of scholars cannot shirk its responsibility. The problem areas in the translations include choice of words and phrases, tense adjustment, versification and punctuation as well as scene description and poetic imagining. Following a detailed discussion of inappropriate and awkward translations, I offer my own translation for comparison if need be.