By Kim Ki-tae
Staff Reporter, Korea Times

Park Sang-ik, author of ``Is Translator Traitor?'' warns that the Korean language may lose its competitiveness within a century if Koreans leave their mother tongue out in the cold. Seen is a Korean student reading a Korean book in the country's pavilion at the 57th Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany last year.

Since the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s, Japan systematically focused on translations of a series of Western classics. The state project soon flooded the then burgeoning society with books of Western greats like Montesquieu, Shakespeare and Adam Smith.

What Japan gained from the massive cross-cultural project was not only thousands of books in their own language but an influx of Western civilization that served as a super fertilizer for its cultural ground. Accordingly, Japanese scholars Maruyama Masao and Kato Shuichi in their book assert that the translations played a pivotal role in Japan's modernization.

While importing these Western cultural treasures, the Japanese also vigorously coined new terms in their own language to match a number of new Western concepts and terms. The invented words, mostly formed by combinations of Chinese characters, were spread and used in the neighboring Korean Peninsula and China.

Philosopher Kang Yong-an once wrote that Koreans owe a huge debt to the Japanese intellectuals of late 19th and early 20th centuries for introducing a number of terms they use in daily and academic life. A few of Japan's wordy inventions include routine words like Chayu (liberty), Pyongdung (equality), Sigan (time) and academic terms like Chorhak (philosophy) and Mihak (aesthetics).

``If we took away Japanese-coined words from our academic vocabulary, we would not be able to write a single thesis or even communicate with each other,'' Kang stressed, paying tribute to Japan's contribution in bridging Western and Asian thought at the dawn of modernization.

In his new book titled ``Are Translators Traitors?'' Park Sang-ik provides meticulous insights into the translation's powerful and traditional influences that are often overlooked and forgotten. Park, who is a Western history professor at Woosuk University, critically notes the ``deplorable'' translation situation in Korea in contrast to Japan.

According to Park, Korea is far, even half a century, behind Japan when it comes to importing Western thought. For example, Park wrote how he translated John Milton's ``Areopagitica'' in 1999 only to find out that the classic was already published in Japanese in 1953. He noted that South Korea could lag Japan for as long as a century as a number of Western classics are still unavailable in Korean. For example, Edmund Burke's ``Reflection on the French Revolution'' and Montesquieu's ``Grandeur And Declension of Roman Empire" have not yet been translated into Korean. Even now, many of the Western classics in Korean are retranslations from Japanese texts.

``Japan launched the work with tremendous passion back in 19th century, but we have not even realized the necessity,'' Park deplored.

The problem is not only the ``shameful'' quantity but also quality of translations. Park confessed that he was "disillusioned and shocked'' to see how shoddy and cursory the translations were, even those done by ``renowned'' scholars, and how many translated works belong within the shameful category. Park took an example of Dante's ``The Divine Comedy'' translated by an Italian language professor, which is full of mistranslations and grammatically wrong expressions. And this is just the tip of a huge iceberg, according to Park. It is almost customary for professors to just let or make graduate students do translations with their own credits, which have spawned bad cross-cultural texts.

Then, what's wrong with the Korean intellectuals? One answer may lie more in the nation's cultural climate than in the individual translators themselves. While Eastern studies in Europe and the United States start based on translations of Eastern classics, Western studies scholars in Korea seem to disregard the translation works as ``something unoriginal.'' Even when universities evaluate the academic records of their professors, the translation works are often ignored or underestimated. This concept has left many critical Western classics untouched and, if anything, mostly substandard translations.

Another factor strangling the nation's translation is a declining book market, Park noted. According to a survey by research firm NOP World, Koreans in 2005 read, on average, 3.1 hours a week, the lowest among the 30 nations surveyed. The number of published books in 2003 dropped by 58.6 percent from 1997 figures. In the case of social science books, the number shrank 91.2 percent for the corresponding period, according to the National Statistical Office.

In this situation, it is virtually impossible for intellectuals to survive as professional translators, according to Park. For example, if a translator sells about 5,000 copies of a 10,000-won ($10) book _ a big hit if it's a social science or humanities studies book _ he could have only around 5 million won in hand at the end. With such minuscule reward for sweaty work, you will either churn out low quality translations or leave the job once and for all, the author writes.

Pointing to the fragile base for the nation's translation, Park went on further to stress that Korea does not even have a proper English-Korean dictionary. Quoting an English professor, Park said the majority of Korean-English dictionaries are translated versions of Japanese-English ones.

``These dictionaries have omitted many Korean words with purely Korean linguistic origins (as they had translated Japanese definitions word for word),'' Park quoted the English scholar.

``Around 12 million Koreans spend around 5 trillion won on English study every year, but the story behind our dictionaries is depressing,'' Park noted.

The author warned that such indifference to the importance of translation could impoverish the cultural ground of the nation and in the end threaten the viability of our mother tongue.

In the book, the author talked of a meeting with a globalist who claimed that Korea needed to adopt English as an official language, as ``Korean language will no longer be competitive in 100 years time.''

Park called the contention ``shocking,'' not because of its nationalism-defying boldness, but because of its penetrating insight on the destiny of an ignored mother tongue. ``Without any resolute action, Korean language will most probably lose its competitiveness in 100 years. The situation we now face in this early 21st century may be a prelude to the doom our mother tongue will face a century later,'' Park wrote.

kkt@koreatimes.co.kr
01-20-2006 18:04

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