직역(直譯)의 재발견: 계보학적 탐구

Abstract

This paper aims to retrace the genealogy of the concept of the literal translation (直譯) in the northeast Asian languages including Korean by comparison with western major languages like English, French and German in order to rediscover the value of this basic form for all practical translations. For this purpose, we decided to examine first the different terms related to this concept and their semantic configuration over the Asian and European languages. After making a repeated search in a variety of language dictionaries as well as in the glossaries and the encyclopedia of the translation studies, we were led to think that literalness, faithfulness and source-orientedness constitute the principal characteristics of the concept of literal translation. Next, we tried to restitute the origin and the formation of the literal translation concept by examining the past key texts on translation and the historical researches on the subject matter. Finally, we proposed a kind of guide to the literal translation as a result of our investigation.