The Study on Strategies for Translating Terms of Address from Russian into Korean

There are various types of terms of address in Russian, and nuance, intention, honorifics to the hearer depend on the forms and combinations of terms of address. In particular, various terms of address and their shifts in literature work as a literary device for expressing the relations between characters, psychological changes, and organic connection to the plot. Especially, play, consisting of scripted dialogue, has abundant terms of address in it than other literature forms, and there is a high possibility of mistranslation, as the relations between characters can only be identified through terms of address. Therefore, when a translator misunderstands or lacks understanding of the pragmatic meanings of terms of address, the relations between characters and the roles of characters can be shifted in the translated text. Even though the terms of address in Russian plays an important role, and it is difficult to translate them from Russian into Korean, there rarely have been studies on the comparison of terms of address between Russian and Korean or on how to translate terms of address from Russian into Korean.
This study aims at comparing the terms of address between Russian and Korean at the sociolinguistic level, thereby laying the foundation for translating terms of address from Russian into Korean. In addition, the study intends to identify how terms of address are being translated from Russian into Korean, what kind of problems there are in translation strategies, and suggest how to solve these problems.
For this, the paper introduced the system of terms of address in Russian and Korean, compared the principle of usage and semantics from the perspective of power and solidarity between the speaker and the hearer, and described alternation rules, co-occurrence rules, and switching, shift, and variation of terms of address. The study also conducted quantitative and qualitative analysis on Russian-Korean literary translation in order to identify how terms of address are being translated. The subject of analysis is nine Korean translations of The Cherry Orchard, which is the representative play of Anton Chekhov. The types of terms of address analyzed include name (N), kinship (K), and second-person pronoun (T/V), which are stylistic characteristics of Chekhov, and the study analyzed semantics by comparing discourses.
The analysis result showed that the majority of translations used transliteration strategy for single name terms of address (N), and literal translation strategy for single kinship terms of address (K). In some cases, power and solidarity of terms of address in the source text shifted in the translated text due to these translation strategies. In the case of combination of name and second-person pronoun (N + T/V) and kinship and second-person pronoun (K + T/V), power and solidarity in the source text were maintained, lost, or distorted depending on the strategies chosen for the terms of address at the sentence level in the translated text such as terms of address, second-person pronouns, and final endings. The problems in translating terms of address from Russian into Korean were categorized into six types: 1) causing confusion of characters; 2) loss of function of terms of address; 3) violation of usage norm of terms of address resulting in loss of semantics of power and solidarity; 4) loss of derived meaning of power and solidarity; 5) distortion of relations between characters; and 6) loss of literary function and effect of shifting of terms of address.
The causes of these problems seem to be due to the following tendencies: 1) recognizing name terms of address (N) only as a proper noun; 2) considering only social roles of the speaker and the hearer when translating terms of address instead of accurately understanding the pragmatic meanings of terms of address; 3) recognizing the combination of first name and patronomic as honorifics, and the rest of name terms of address as plain terms; 4) recognizing V second-person pronoun as honorifics, and T second-person pronoun as plain terms.
To solve these problems found in translating terms of address from Russian into Korean, the study tried to categorize translation strategies for terms of address. The paper provided the matrix of sociolinguistic alternation rules of name terms of address (N), kinship terms of address (K), and second-person pronoun address (T/V) in The Cherry Orchard, and suggested translation strategies for these terms of address focusing on honorifics at the sentence level. As a conclusion, the study provided strategy model for translating terms of address, and demonstrated that this model can solve the problems found in the existing translations.
This study laid the foundation for further discussion and revitalization of studies on Russian-Korean translation of terms of address, as there are few studies on the comparison of terms of address between Russian and Korean. In addition to identifying the current status of translation of terms of address and describing the effect and limitation of translation strategies, the study also suggested strategies for translating terms of address from Russian into Korean by categorizing various translation strategies. The paper also expanded the scope of the study on terms of address from the word level into the honorifics level. This study aims at improving the quality of translation of terms of address through emphasizing the importance of terms of address in Russian-Korean literary translation training and suggesting the function and role of terms of address as a factor to be considered in literary translation evaluation and criticism.
However, the size of the data and the number of types of terms address analyzed in this study are relatively small. Therefore, it would be necessary to increase the size of corpus for more elaborate study. At the same time, verification and revision of strategy model for translating terms of address from Russian into Korean and sociolinguistic alternation rule for Russian terms of address suggested in this paper would also be necessary.