التواصل الثقافي في ترجمة الأدب الكوري

Cultural Transfer in the Translation of Korean Literature

Translation is the task of expressing the meaning implied in one language by another language. There are differences among scholars regarding the academic category of translation. In other words, there has been a debate between translators and theorists about whether translation is science or art. Translators claim that translation is a subjective and creative activity that cannot be regulated by the translation theory. On the other hand, theorists who claim that translation is science view translation as a task of maintaining semantic equivalence according to the rules of languages. This compatibility appears when translation is divided into literary and non-literary translations. In the case of non-literary translation, the rules of languages are needed to maintain the semantic equivalence between languages, but literary translation is done in a practical and creative method rather than relying on a specific translation theory. Nida emphasizes the importance of cultural transfer in literary translation by dividing the process of translation into four stages: the original text → understanding of the translator → reproduction of the translator → acceptance of the reader. This study aims to present an effective translation strategy in the Arabic translation of Korean literary texts. In particular, it will examine the translation methods of the cultural expressions such as proverbs and idiomatic expressions through two methods of cultural transfer, namely the domesticating method and the foreignizing method. The biggest difficulty that appears in the process of translating Korean literary works into Arabic is to convert Korean cultural expressions to make Arab readers to understand easier. Ultimately the purpose of literary translation is to attract the foreign literature into the culture of the arrival language. Therefore, it is necessary to meet the social and cultural conditions of the arrival language. Therefore, maintaining cultural transfer by properly combining the domesticating method and the foreignizing method will greatly reduce the possibility of errors in the translation process. Finally, this study will present the translation and publication condition of Korean literary works by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea and suggest ways to expand the Arabic translation activities of Korean literary works.