번역공학적 이성 비판: 디지털 시대 번역학의 과제

Abstract

In the digital age we live now, technology is neither an accessory nor an adjunct to translation, but it is central to the definition of translation activity. Moreover, James S. Holmes, in his seminal paper on “The Name and the Nature of Translation Studies” (1972), has defined the machine as a medium which performs the translation as the humans do. Even in the translation process by the Google Translate, it is true that we don’t see the presence of the human translator anywhere. Therefore, it is an urgent task for the translation studies to criticize the translation technology’s reason, that is, to objectify and domesticate the translation by the digitalization of all knowledge on translation. Taken in the irrevocable movement of the technologization of the language, the translation technology can’t set for itself the epistemological, cultural and even political bounds necessary. But the translation studies, reflective knowledge on translation, can and must allow the translation technology to better assume its own field and to better perceive its limits. Otherwise, the translation technology could be transformed into a radical attempt to destroy all the languages-mediums forming the base of itself and of the human existence.