An interesting article at the Korea Times (which the OAF spotted this week) about a recent decline in translation quality. The article attributes this decline to several things including:
"a lack of historical background knowledge or poor Korean language skills ...many have a problem in remaining loyal to the original text, which fails to revive the literary beauty and meaning,''
and
"the mistranslations were a result of an editor's mistake and a translator's expediency. "
Of course I think the BKF and I as a team solve these problems since he has good knowledge of Korean and its literature and his focus has always been on translating the meaning and combined effect of passages rather than strictly literal translation on a line-to-line level. The fact that I work directly with him, and often at exactly the same time, also substantially reduces the likelihood of editor-induced error.
As to the "translator's expediency?"
Further deponent says not! ;-)
2 comments:
oh! and here i thought you were going to say that the article sited a marked degradation in translation quality since a certain WAY-gook came onto the scene. ;-)
-AF
Staying loyal to the original work...Staying loyal to the original work...staying loyal to the original work... What the hell does that mean and how does one do that when certain concepts of one culture is not found in another?
BKF
ps. articles like this pisses me off. I want to read translations of the professor guy has done to see the degree of his loyalty...
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