The Current State of W. B. Yeats's Poems in Korean Translation
The purpose of this paper is to assess the current state of W. B. Yeats’s poems in Korean translation. My examination includes nearly all of the Korean translations of the quoted verse lines of Yeats’s poems appearing in The Yeats Journal of Korea between 2006 and 2008, and parts of translations of Yeats’s works published as separate volumes by the Yeats Society of Korea since 2003. Although so far three generations of scholars have actively engaged in Yeats studies and translation of his works since 1945 when academic research on the poet began in Korea, the translation endeavours by the second and third generation scholars have not yielded satisfactory results and that the senior group of scholars cannot shirk its responsibility.The problem areas in the translations include choice of words and phrases, tense adjustment, versification and punctuation as well as scene description and poetic imagining. Following a detailed discussion of inappropriate and awkward translations, I offer my own translation for comparison if need be.