무생물 주어구문의 번역에 관한 연구

Abstract

This paper is a comparative study to discuss how animacy affects Korean-English translations. 113 subjects sentences are selected from ‘Please Look After Mom’(Korean-English Version). Our analysis shows the followings :ⅰ) 24.8% of the Korean transitive verb are kept as transitive verb in their English translations - 92.9% of inanimate subjects are kept, while 75.2% of intransitive verb are translated as transitive verb - 31.5% of inanimate subjects are kept while 68.5% are changed. ⅱ) Inanimate subjects such as things included in body, personification, disease, nature, machine(e.g. clock) are chosen as subjects in Korean. ⅲ) Less prototypical transitive clauses in Korean tend to be chosen as transitive clauses with the same inanimate subjects. ⅳ) animacy subjects occurring in reason, cause, feeling slots in Korean are translated as objects in their English translations. ⅴ) adverbial phrases included in place, instrument in Korean intransitive clauses are translated as subjects in English. English has an overwhelming number of transitive verbs the subject of which can be inanimate in comparison with Korean, in which corresponding constructions with inanimate subjects are rare, if any.

Key Words : animacy, transitivity, agentivity, translation, inanimate subject