유생성에 따른 영어 타동사 구문의 한국어 번역 유형

Abstract

Animacy and Korean Translations of English Transitives

Ae, Shin

Graduate School of English Pukyong National University

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to discuss how English transitives translate into Korean and how English-Korean translations are affected by the idea of animacy. 145 English transitives (including 124 animate subject sentences and 21 inanimate subject sentences) were selected from Reader’s Digest (English-Korean Version) Vol. 101. The analysis shows that the English-Korean translation of the animate subject sentences (22.6%) have fewer changes than that of the inanimate subject sentences (52.4%). The Korean translations are changed according to the animacy of the subjects and the objects. The following is the result of the analysis. Most of the animate subjects are kept as subject in their Korean translations. When the animate objects are used, two thirds of them are translated taking Korean personal suffix ‘-ege’. In the case of inanimate objects, double subject structures in which the original subjects still keep their positions and the objects are promoted to a subject position are remarkable. When inanimate subjects remain as subject in Korean, the inanimate subjects are such as organization, country, city, machine or less typical agents (e.g tumor). In the case of animate objects in inanimate subject sentences, 83.3% of the animate objects are promoted to a subject position and the inanimate subjects are translated into Korean mainly as an instrument, a place or an adverbial adding the proper Korean suffixes. With either inanimate subject or inanimate object, the element which implies a human participant can be translated as the subject in Korean. When the transitive clauses are less prototypical or Korean translations are affected by English which allows inanimate subjects, inanimate subjects tend to be translated in their original positions in Korean, too.