Inscriptional Repertoires and the Problem of Intra- versus Interlingual Translation in Traditional Korea

Abstract:This article brings together a series of examples demonstrating the wide range of inscriptional practices in premodern Korea and the ways in which they force us to reconsider modern and Eurocentric notions of translation. The premodern inscriptional spectrum in Chosŏn Korea was not a simple binary of cosmopolitan orthodox Literary Sinitic versus vernacular Korean in the form of ŏnhae exegeses but was a range of inscriptional styles that included idu and kugyŏl. The ways in which texts were inscribed, reinscribed, and transliterated between these different inscriptional styles, as well as the ways in which Chosŏn literati themselves understood the notion of yŏk (譯, “translation”) challenge modern-day notions of translation, on the one hand, but also invite an understanding of them as rather more intralingual than interlingual. They also force us to ask whether LS was conceived as a “foreign” language for literate Koreans in Chosŏn. The premodern Korean cases forces us to add script and inscriptional repertoire (including notions of orthography, notational system, munch’e 文體, etc.) to the list of the main factors that influence intralingual translation.