Translators, translations, and paratexts in South Korea’s gender conflicts

ABSTRACT

In recent years, South Korea has witnessed an unprecedented wave of feminism. Many women have staged demonstrations against deep-seated patriarchal practices and attacked men’s sexuality online in a provocative way. In addition, they have avidly read a wide range of feminist books and shared their gendered experiences in various internet forums. Against this backdrop, this study aims to show how translations and paratexts have been shaped, received, and used in South Korea’s transition to a gender-conscious society. For this purpose, the study reviews three recent gender-related events/phenomena. First, it examines three types of paratexts in translations of feminist books (book titles, cover images, and translators’ prefaces) to reveal what ideologies are most prominent in the translation paratexts. Second, it explores the parodic appropriations of misogynistic terms and discourses, with an emphasis on ‘mirroring’. Third, it introduces political controversies over Korean translations of the terms gender equality and misogyny to show an ideological fault line between two gender groups. This article concludes with brief comments about the constructive effects of translations and paratexts on South Korea’s gender awareness.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminism
• paratexts of translations
• female translators
• translator’s preface
• parody
• gender-related terminology

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the four publishers for granting permission to reproduce the cover images (Figure 1). I am also grateful to the editor-in-chief and reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sang-Bin Lee is a professor in the Department of English for International Conferences and Communication at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, where he teaches translation and consecutive interpreting. He is a member of the presidential committee for the Korean Association for Translation Studies (KATS). He has contributed to internationally recognised journals such as The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, Interpreting, Babel, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, and Educational Action Research.

Notes

1 As of 30 January 2019, five out of ten bestselling feminist books in South Korea were translations, according to Yes24.

2 In this article, the translator’s preface ‘encompasses … material which either precedes or follows the text’ (Batchelor, 2018, p. 26).

3 In 2018, feminist writing began to be visible in translations. For example, several translators chose ‘여남’ yeonam (women and men) over ‘남녀’ namnyeo (men and women), and rendered the word incest as ‘근친강간’ geunchin ganggan (rape by a close relative), instead of the existing equivalent ‘근친상간’ geunchin sanggan (sex between close relatives).

4 Data were extracted from Yes24 bookstore (www.yes24.com).

5 The limitations of this kind of qualitative research are discussed in Batchelor (2018, pp. 169–173).

6 Attitude means lexicogrammatical choices through which the addresser talks about how they feel or behave towards things or events. Graduation means lexicogrammatical choices through which the addresser can strengthen (or weaken) or sharpen (or soften) their evaluations.

7 Pink is used so often that some claim that publishing houses should avoid using the colour because of its gender stereotyping (Yi, 2017). In some translations, pink extends from the edge to the spine, which accords high visibility to the book even on the bookshelf.

8 Modality is concerned with the relationship between image and reality. Visuals with low modality are those that represent people, things, or events as though they are imaginings and fantasies (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006, p. 156).

9 Handwritten typefaces are generally effective in strengthening the bond between the product and the consumer (Schroll et al., 2018). Books are consumable products.

10 For details, see Batchelor (2018, p. 160).

11 Korean people do not use third-person pronouns in everyday language. Job titles are not gender-specific.

12 Chinese characters called hanja (漢字) were borrowed and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation.

13 This government agency is ‘여성가족부’ yeoseong gajokbu. It literally translates as the Ministry of Women and Family, but its official English name is the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

14 These men seem to claim that yeoseonghyeomo and misogyny differ in their ‘expressive meanings’ (Baker, 2018, pp. 12–13). Von Flotow (1997) notes that translators can construct feminist meanings through over-translation, feminisation, wordplay, etc.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund.