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Article published In:
FORUM
Vol. 18:1 (2020) ► pp.45–67

A comparison between the professional backgrounds of translation scholars in South Korea and Europe

| Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
| Ewha Womans University
| Busan University of Foreign Studies

A survey of 80 translation scholars in South Korea was conducted to shed light on their professional backgrounds and how their profiles compare with those of the translation scholars in Europe surveyed by Torres-Simón and Pym in 2016. The survey results suggest that Korean scholars tend to be younger than scholars in Europe (84 percent of the former are under fifty, compared to 68 percent of the latter), more female-dominated (85 percent versus 70 percent), and less internationally mobile. The great majority of both Korean scholars (84 percent) and scholars in Europe (96 percent) have translated or interpreted on a regular basis. Both groups generally agree that there is a beneficial relationship between translation theory and practice. In both samples, the respondents who said practice helps theory outnumber those that said theory helps practice. The last section of this study is a word-cloud analysis on the adjectives that Korean scholars used to describe the relationship between theory and practice.

Keywords: translation scholars, Translation Studies in South Korea, theory-practice relationship, professional backgrounds of translation scholars, practisearchers
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: How this research began
  • 2.Methodology: How we ‘translated’ Torres Simón and -Pym’s survey
    • 2.1Adjustments to questionnaire
    • 2.2Distribution of survey
  • 3.Demographics of Korean translation scholars
    • 3.1Personal details: Age, sex, international mobility of Korean translation scholars
    • 3.2Professional backgrounds of Korean translation scholars
    • 3.3Academic training
    • 3.4What were Korean translation scholars doing in their mid-twenties?
    • 3.5Number of scholarly articles published
  • 4.Reported relations between translation and scholarly work
    • 4.1There is some relation between theory and practice (57.5 percent, 46 responses)
    • 4.2There is a major relation between theory and practice (16.3 percent, 13 responses)
    • 4.3There may or may not be a relation, depending on the situation (13.8 percent, 11 responses)
    • 4.4There is no relation between theory and practice (3.7 percent, 3 responses)
    • 4.5Word cloud analysis
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 June 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.19011.lee
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