When languages come into contact, they are likely to undergo contact-induced changes. Translation is obviously a mode of language contact, as it involves a source language and a target language with translators playing “contact agent” for writers and readers. Although, in today’s globalized world, l...
When languages come into contact, they are likely to undergo contact-induced changes. Translation is obviously a mode of language contact, as it involves a source language and a target language with translators playing “contact agent” for writers and readers. Although, in today’s globalized world, language contact has become more direct and intense even between typologically and geographically distant languages such as English and Korean by virtue of the Internet, mass media, and increased travel, translation still serves as a primary medium to enable communication across different languages. Translation may arguably influence the language community as a whole, not just individuals. Moreover, translation from English, the de facto lingua franca, into other languages is ever increasing. Today, the power and prestige of English is so overwhelming in culture, business, politics, and other sectors of society that Englishization or Anglicism has become a common phenomenon around the world. Amid this trend, this thesis aims to investigate “fingerprints” (Gellerstam, 2005) of English observed in English-to-Korean translation as well as in original Korean texts. In fact, the influence of English has long been favored as a research subject in the field of translation studies in Korea, and a number of studies have already discussed this issue. Nevertheless, they have often limited their research scope to the subject of “translationese” or the “characteristics of translated language,” and thus, the nature of translation as a mode of language contact has not yet been properly explored. Against this backdrop, this thesis attempts to shed new light on the influence of English on the Korean language through translational contact, paying due attention to relevant key factors: the mechanism of language contact and change, socio-linguistic factors driving contact-induced language changes, and translators’ decision making in accepting or avoiding the influence of English. After all, the influence of English is bound to take the shape of linguistic features in texts. The scope of this thesis focuses on the phenomenon of borrowing, among other features, which occurs at the lexical level. The research and analysis framework in the thesis draws on theories and models from contact linguistics. For the analysis, a total of 600 news articles (approximately 464,000 words) were collected from prestigious news magazines—Newsweek and its Korean translation and Sisa Journal as original texts—from two different time periods spanning the early 1990s to the early 2010s. The entire dataset is organized into two parallel corpora of English source texts and Korean target texts and two comparable corpora of Korean original texts for the two time periods. The framework for data analysis consists of two different, but not necessarily incompatible, analysis methods: descriptive and explanatory. In the descriptive analysis based on Johanson’s (1999, 2002a, 2008) code-copying framework and Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) borrowing scale model, the corpora and variables are quantitatively examined, and examples are discussed. In the explanatory analysis based on Gómez-Rendón’s (2008) borrowing model, key findings of the descriptive analysis are qualitatively reviewed to identify their potential causes, which are then validated against the results from e-mail interviews with professional translators. Findings show that patterns of lexical borrowing differ between the translated and the original texts. By code-copying type, global copying and frequential copying occur more often in translation than in original texts, whereas the reverse is true for semantic copying and combinational copying. It is assumed that translators are more mindful of semantic copying and combinational copying than of other types of copying, as these are likely to involve changes of syntactic structure—order or styles of adjacent words—which may lead to translationese. This assumption is supported by translators’ interview responses: They tend to avoid awkwardness—often associated with translationese—and prefer more natural, domesticated, and reader-friendly linguistic expressions, especially for translations of news magazine articles. Translators also make their copying decisions considering extra-linguistic factors, such as text type and genre, text purpose or function, stakeholders, norms, and so on, a potential indication of translators’ tendency toward risk aversion (Pym, 2008). In diachronic terms, changes are more noticeable in global copying than in other types. Results show that accelerated Englishization in Korea can mostly be accounted for by the increased global copying of content words. In addition, the diachronic increase in global copying turns out to be greater in original texts than in translations, which indicates that ordinary speakers may be more receptive toward Englishization. This is well supported by relevant responses from e-mail interviews with professional translators that reveal translators’ negative perceptions of unnecessary Englishization in the Korean language. The global copying analysis of high-frequency terms, business and system, in translations and non-translations also revealed the following finding: Lexical borrowability may vary not only by word class (content words or function words) but also by other factors, such as competing mother tongue expressions, text type, genre, purpose, function, and “borrowers.” This argument is also supported by related interview responses, as translators cite text type, genre, purpose, and function as the most critical points to consider when deciding on copying. This thesis concludes that the influence of English is not always more obvious in translated Korean texts than in original Korean texts, as opposed to conventional wisdom and findings from prior research. This seems attributable to numerous non-linguistic and socio-linguistic factors and causes and their complicated interactions that accelerate or decelerate contact-induced language change and influence translators’ decision-making processes. Despite its limitations in scope, this research broadens the horizon of translation studies by introducing a new perspective from contact linguistics for studying the influence of English in English-to-Korean translation. It also highlights the value of empirical studies through synchronic and diachronic corpus-based data analysis: validating previous studies and discovering time-induced language changes. Finally, the research methods employed in this study are expected to provide useful insights for the education and training of translators.
When languages come into contact, they are likely to undergo contact-induced changes. Translation is obviously a mode of language contact, as it involves a source language and a target language with translators playing “contact agent” for writers and readers. Although, in today’s globalized world, language contact has become more direct and intense even between typologically and geographically distant languages such as English and Korean by virtue of the Internet, mass media, and increased travel, translation still serves as a primary medium to enable communication across different languages. Translation may arguably influence the language community as a whole, not just individuals. Moreover, translation from English, the de facto lingua franca, into other languages is ever increasing. Today, the power and prestige of English is so overwhelming in culture, business, politics, and other sectors of society that Englishization or Anglicism has become a common phenomenon around the world. Amid this trend, this thesis aims to investigate “fingerprints” (Gellerstam, 2005) of English observed in English-to-Korean translation as well as in original Korean texts. In fact, the influence of English has long been favored as a research subject in the field of translation studies in Korea, and a number of studies have already discussed this issue. Nevertheless, they have often limited their research scope to the subject of “translationese” or the “characteristics of translated language,” and thus, the nature of translation as a mode of language contact has not yet been properly explored. Against this backdrop, this thesis attempts to shed new light on the influence of English on the Korean language through translational contact, paying due attention to relevant key factors: the mechanism of language contact and change, socio-linguistic factors driving contact-induced language changes, and translators’ decision making in accepting or avoiding the influence of English. After all, the influence of English is bound to take the shape of linguistic features in texts. The scope of this thesis focuses on the phenomenon of borrowing, among other features, which occurs at the lexical level. The research and analysis framework in the thesis draws on theories and models from contact linguistics. For the analysis, a total of 600 news articles (approximately 464,000 words) were collected from prestigious news magazines—Newsweek and its Korean translation and Sisa Journal as original texts—from two different time periods spanning the early 1990s to the early 2010s. The entire dataset is organized into two parallel corpora of English source texts and Korean target texts and two comparable corpora of Korean original texts for the two time periods. The framework for data analysis consists of two different, but not necessarily incompatible, analysis methods: descriptive and explanatory. In the descriptive analysis based on Johanson’s (1999, 2002a, 2008) code-copying framework and Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) borrowing scale model, the corpora and variables are quantitatively examined, and examples are discussed. In the explanatory analysis based on Gómez-Rendón’s (2008) borrowing model, key findings of the descriptive analysis are qualitatively reviewed to identify their potential causes, which are then validated against the results from e-mail interviews with professional translators. Findings show that patterns of lexical borrowing differ between the translated and the original texts. By code-copying type, global copying and frequential copying occur more often in translation than in original texts, whereas the reverse is true for semantic copying and combinational copying. It is assumed that translators are more mindful of semantic copying and combinational copying than of other types of copying, as these are likely to involve changes of syntactic structure—order or styles of adjacent words—which may lead to translationese. This assumption is supported by translators’ interview responses: They tend to avoid awkwardness—often associated with translationese—and prefer more natural, domesticated, and reader-friendly linguistic expressions, especially for translations of news magazine articles. Translators also make their copying decisions considering extra-linguistic factors, such as text type and genre, text purpose or function, stakeholders, norms, and so on, a potential indication of translators’ tendency toward risk aversion (Pym, 2008). In diachronic terms, changes are more noticeable in global copying than in other types. Results show that accelerated Englishization in Korea can mostly be accounted for by the increased global copying of content words. In addition, the diachronic increase in global copying turns out to be greater in original texts than in translations, which indicates that ordinary speakers may be more receptive toward Englishization. This is well supported by relevant responses from e-mail interviews with professional translators that reveal translators’ negative perceptions of unnecessary Englishization in the Korean language. The global copying analysis of high-frequency terms, business and system, in translations and non-translations also revealed the following finding: Lexical borrowability may vary not only by word class (content words or function words) but also by other factors, such as competing mother tongue expressions, text type, genre, purpose, function, and “borrowers.” This argument is also supported by related interview responses, as translators cite text type, genre, purpose, and function as the most critical points to consider when deciding on copying. This thesis concludes that the influence of English is not always more obvious in translated Korean texts than in original Korean texts, as opposed to conventional wisdom and findings from prior research. This seems attributable to numerous non-linguistic and socio-linguistic factors and causes and their complicated interactions that accelerate or decelerate contact-induced language change and influence translators’ decision-making processes. Despite its limitations in scope, this research broadens the horizon of translation studies by introducing a new perspective from contact linguistics for studying the influence of English in English-to-Korean translation. It also highlights the value of empirical studies through synchronic and diachronic corpus-based data analysis: validating previous studies and discovering time-induced language changes. Finally, the research methods employed in this study are expected to provide useful insights for the education and training of translators.
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