영역(英譯) 한국고전시선집(韓國古典詩選集) 『The Orchid Door 난규(蘭閨)』 선취(選取) 양상(樣相)의 문제점 -수록작품의 국적과 갈래를 중심으로- = A Study on the Criteria Used to Select Works for The Orchid Door, An Anthology of Korean Classical Poetry Translated into English, Focusing on Nationality and Genre

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper examines whether all the works included in The Orchid Door, an anthology compiled by Joan S. Grigsby, belong to the category of` Ancient Korean Poems`, which is the subtitle of the book. The Orchid Door, which was first published in Japan in 1935 and reprinted in New York in 1970, is comprised of English translations of seventy two Korean classical poems. Grigsby, a Scottish poet, was not very proficient in Korean, but in the 1930s there were already English versions of many Korean classical poems, which had been translated by James S. Gale. Grigsby`s work was aimed at adding a layer of eloquence to Gale`s translations. To fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of her versions, we need to investigate both the English and the Korean sources. To fulfill the remit of the book`s subtitle, all of the Korean texts should be examples of `Ancient Korean Poems`, and most of them do indeed fall within this rubric, but some do not. For example, < Lament for Prince Chagoo >(p.36) is a translation of a poem contained in the Book of Odes(詩經), which is one of the representative Chinese classical books, and the writer of < The Grave of So-Koon > (p. 73) was Sang Kun, a Chinese poet from the Tang Dynasty. In addition, < Tea > (p. 38) and < The Louse and The Dog > (p. 50) were originally prose works, not verse. Clearly, for different reasons, these four texts do not belong to the category of `Ancient Korean Poems`. The most significant reason for their mistaken inclusion was Grigsby`s lack of understanding of the Korean language, and Korea`s culture and literature. Her excessive enthusiasm to include the widest breadth of the art of the Korean people, in order to gain recognition for their achievement, might have been another factor. Finally, the fact that she did not intend to render the original texts faithfully might also have been responsible for these errors. Ultimately, the taste of her Western readership was much more important to her than an attempt to retain the original meaning and context of the texts.