This writing aims at introducing Yonghill Kang`s Translations of Oriental Poetry to the academia, and scrutinizing the characteristics of sijos translated into English included in it. First, I examined the errors on the existing records about Translat...
This writing aims at introducing Yonghill Kang`s Translations of Oriental Poetry to the academia, and scrutinizing the characteristics of sijos translated into English included in it. First, I examined the errors on the existing records about Translations of Oriental Poetry and clarified the bibliography of it. This book is the English translation of anthology of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean poetry which was translated by Yonghill Kang who gained fame for the English novel, The Grass Roof. It contained 33 pieces of classical sijos. This book was the first poetry anthology which contained sijos translated in English, and it seemed that it was made for the lectures in Comparative Literature at New York University. The following year, Kang tried to republish it under the new title Anthology of Chinese, Japanese and Korean Poetry after the modification with Frances Keely but it seemed that it did not work out. Judging from its array and selection, it seemed that original anthology did not exist. Rather, the book seemed to lean on Kang`s memory, and this explains mistranslation. As a matter of fact, his translation can be said to be pretty faithful translation which tried to capture both content and form of sijo. It is clearer comparing to sijos translated in English at about the same time by Gale, a missionary, and Youngtae Pyun. Poems of Gale and Pyun had rhyme so that the legibility was high. On the contrary, Kang`s sijos translated in English did not show such characteristics. Kang rhymed lines in Chinese poetry, while he tried to show the structural characteristics of sijo, which is consisted of three verses highlighting the last verse. In a nut shell, Kang seemed to understand the characteristics of poems written in Chinese characters and sijo, and attempted to make the most of their features translating them into English. In Translations of Oriental Poetry, sijo was not introduced as lyric but poem. This shows Kang`s intention which tried to place sijo at the modern concept of literature. He enabled sijo to be discussed on the equal level with poetry written in Chinese characters, waka, and furthermore, Western poetry. This book contributed to contemporary comparative literary researchers to accept sijo as a kind of literature, and academic research subject. Also it, even though it did not commercially succeeded, introduced sijo globally as it became included and published again within the novel The Grass Roof, The Happy Grove, and the poetry anthology Grove of Azalea.