Lessons Learned in Translating the Paekche Annals of the Samguk Sagi

Abstract:Both as a historian and as a person who has recently translated the Paekche Annals (Paekche pon’gi) from the twelfth-century Samguk sagi, it is my belief that there are three factors that are of fundamental importance both to the original composition of any work on history and to its later translation. The three are: 1) the conceptualization of what span of time and what types of information are relevant to a proper understanding of the history being considered; 2) the theoretical or philosophical assumptions concerning the value or purpose of history underlying the text and its translation; and 3) the historiographic methodology whereby it is understood that these ends ought properly to be achieved. Although Kim Pusik (1075–1151), who oversaw the compilation of the Samguk sagi, and I differ somewhat on all three points, my first duty as his translator was to express as accurately as possible his ideas as represented in the text of the Paekche Annals, and then—where necessary and appropriate—to express any contrasting ideas of my own in annotations. In this paper I present a few examples of how the three factors listed above affected Kim’s representation of Paekche history in the Paekche Annals, and how in some of these instances a differing historical perspective of mine was expressed through the annotations appended to my translation of his text.