A Comparative Study of Metaphor Translations between Thai-Subtitled and Original Korean Movie Scripts “Kim Ji-Young: Born 1982”
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Abstract
This article aims to compare the metaphor translations applied in the original Korean movie script and the Thai-subtitled one from the Korean movie “Kim Ji-Young: Born 1982” (82 년생 김지영) in order to analyze metaphorical structures from the movie scripts. This research will benefit teaching Korean Language for Thai learners in metaphor translation and investigating Thai-Korean movie subtitle translations. The study found 172 metaphors, which can be divided into 3 main groups: Group 1, the general metaphors were applied in Thai and Korean movie scripts (43.61%), which can be further divided into 3 subgroups: 1.1 using the same word to represent the metaphor with the same meaning (11.05%), 1.2 using different word to represent the metaphor with the same meaning (11.63%), and 1.3 using vocabulary in the same lexical group to represent the metaphor with the same meaning (20.93%). In Group 2, metaphors were applied in Korean movie script whereas direct meaning vocabularies were applied in Thai-subtitled movie script (26.74%). And in Group 3, metaphors were applied in Thai-subtitled movie script whereas direct meaning vocabularies were applied in Korean movie script (29.65%). This study found traces of cultural similarities in metaphor translations between Thai and Korean subtitled movie scripts as shown in Group 1, In contrast, Group 2 and 3 metaphors were applied differently which reflected the uniqueness of each language. Some metaphors were used specifically in Korean but there were none of these metaphors in Thai language and the same phenomenon occurred vice versa. Therefore, it is impossible to provide the perfect metaphor translations with the closet meaning to the original source text. This study also revealed a consistency after applying the Stockwell, Bowen and Martin’s Hierarchy of Difficulty in Foreign Language Studies (Stockwell, Bowen, & Martin, 1965 as cited in Kobsirithiwara, 2021), and translation theory called Skopostheorie by Reiß and Vermeer Reiß and Vermeer’s Skopostheorie translation theory (Reiß & Vermeer, 1984 as cited in Saengaramruang, 2020). This study also found that the metaphor translations had different levels of difficulty - ease, and choosing metaphors was largely the translator’s decision. The Skopostheorie recommended by Reiß and Vermeer emphasized the importance of culture in the translation process, and it was critical to assess who the recipients of the translation were, and whether they had cultural or basic knowledge of the source text or not including the purpose of translation. From the correlation analysis, metaphors in Groups 2 and 3 showed the Hierarchy of Difficulty at Level 1 (Split), Level 2 (New), and Level 3 (Absent). It indicates that the more word choices the translators have, it tends to be more difficult for the translators’ decision-making process.
Keywords: Korean Metaphor, Thai Metaphor, Translation, Movie Script
References
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