An Integrated Approach To Multiple Factors In Chinese-Korean Translation Of China’s Elementary And Middle School Textbooks

In China’s academia, Translation Studies as a field of research has been seeing a steady development over years, however, problems of textbook translation into China’s 21 minor languages for over six million students and more than ten thousand minority schools has by now received little if any studies.With Snell Hornby’s integration methodology as its theoretical basis, German functionalism, institution translation and Bourdieu’s "Field" and "Habitus" as its guideline, the dissertation paints firstly the whole picture of the textbook translation by employing Curriculum textbooks of primary and secondary schools-special of its kinds-as its empirical materials, and exploring into various related interactive factors with the descriptive methodology; it then proceeds with a practical inquiry into workable strategies of textbook translation from Chinese to Korean, and approaches of translation teaching within the prescriptive framework. The dissertation has among its study dimensions a criticism of various translation theories,the translation practice from Chinese to Korean, the theories of the related disciplines and their relationship with the subject under study, the internal and external factors of textbook translation, and the macroscopic positioning and practical strategies of textbook translation.The study shows that the external factors exert an enormous impact upon textbook translation. The policy orientation and the administration of the state not only determine the translation choice and timing, but also the translation progress and procedure. In addition, textbooks to be translated as special texts tend to be foreignized, but meanwhile as somewhat market-oriented publications they tend to be domesticated. The current practice shows, despite occasional adaptations that result from reception considerations on the part of auditors and revisers, the textbook translation from Chinese to Korean up to now has not gone beyond original-centrality or strictly literal rendition.Internal factors also affect the textbook translation, in particular, the absence of the translator’s subjectivity, delimits severely the free space for translation. In addition, the translator’s biased understanding of" full translation ", his inadequate expertise, knowledge of the languages and cultural background lead frequently to monotony of translation style through unvaried sentence structures, more literal instead of liberal translation thanks to following too closely Chinese expressions rather than idiomatic Korean ones, frequent original words in brackets following their translations, word-for-word translation, translationese, and mistranslation in content and words, etc..It may be concluded from the analysis above that the prevailing practice of textbook translation from Chinese to Korean results from the interplaying of both internal and external factors such as education, publishing, ideology, culture, the translator and the text, which shows itself in the forms of containment, negotiation complementation, and integration between and among the various related factors themselves.However, the author of the dissertation argues that textbooks as special texts should be translated according to the principle of transferring educational function, therefore textbook translation should take the policy-orientation and regulation of the state as its prerequisite, the original content and form as its basis, take into consideration all the parties concerned like the sponsor, the commissioner, the translator, and the reader, and work out their priorities, furthermore, textbook translation should also relate these priorities to the function of the target text, the characteristics of the medium, so that one can formulate practical strategies for textbook translation and textbook translator education.From all these steps above one can derive the various translation strategies, like those of the text, of creativity, of retrieval as well as translation teaching methodologies based on a combination of institutional professional learning and self-learning, which prove valuable for textbook translation.