무생물주어 타동사구문의 영-한 번역 양상 분석

Abstract

Many Korean students have difficulty in translating English into Korean and vice versa because of their misconception that the two languages are identical. Thus clarifying differences between the two languages can help students to acquire proper strategies for understanding and producing their target language. The purpose of this study is to analyze one of the most different characteristics between two languages, 'inanimate subject-transitive verb construct', find its English-Korean translation patterns and hopefully provide useful reference which can be used in real classrooms. For this purpose, 120 sentences involving the arguing construct were extracted from three English novels along with the counterpart sentences from their Korean versions. The results of the analysis are as followings. First, while 95.8% of examined animate subjects with transitive verbs remain in their position in their Korean translations, 60.8% of examined inanimate subjects in the same construct are kept as subjects when translated. It shows that Korean is much more reluctant to have an inanimate subject than English. Second, inanimate subjects such as organizations, machines, bodily parts and personalized things by charm can take a same role of animate subjects in terms of animacy, so there's hardly any change of their subject position in Korean translations. Third, 67.7% of animate objects in inanimate subject sentences are promoted to the subject in their translations and most of the inanimate subjects are demoted to adverbial clauses or phrases saying a reason, a means, a place, a condition, etc. Also, other elements implying human participants can be promoted to the subject in Korean translations depending on semantic relations. Fourth, inanimate subjects tend to remain in their original position in Korean when transitive verbs used in arguing construct have relatively less transitivity or Korean translations are affected by English which is more favorable to inanimate subjects.