영한 번역의 문제

English-Korean Translation: Thematic Progression

This study highlights the importance of ‘translating’ the thematic progression in English-Korean translation. When we talk about how well a text is written, that is, how tightly all its parts are woven, the following three concepts are most often mentioned: theme-rheme, cohesion and coherence. Among these three, theme-rheme is the most important because it is more directly related to information flow than the other two. In other words, the theme-rheme structure of a text plays a crucial role in the reader’s understanding. However, translation between two languages, in particular those with fundamentally different syntactic structures, often produces a target text with theme-rheme structures quite different from those of the source language text, resulting in disruption of the original information flow. This phenomenon has not yet received much attention despite its importance. This study compares theme-rheme structures of English source texts with those of existing Korean translations. It shows that the target language text becomes more readable when it follows the theme-rheme structure of the source language text.