Approaching Modernity in Translation and Adaptation through Ssangongnu

This article investigates the sympathetic translation strategies employed in Ssangongnu (Jade Tears), translated from Japanese into Korean by Jo Junghwan. The story was serialized in Maeil sinbo (Daily News) from 1912 to 1913. The original text is Onogatsumi (My Sin), written by Kikuchi Yuho. This study employs the concepts of "East Asian cultural communication" and "cultural translation" as analytical tools to examine how Ssangongnu deals with asymmetry vis-a-vis the original language, cultural conventions, and emotional representations. It also examines how the original text was restructured to reflect the generic conventions, narrative grammar patterns, closing structure, and sentimental structures of traditional Korean fiction. By reconsidering the characteristics of Maeil sinbo and the context of modernization, it explores how the translator drew attention to unfamiliar emotional language used in the original text to convey such emotions as guilt, hysteria, and self-defining love and also engaged in such topics as child murder and mental illness, which were less familiar to Korean readers. This article argues that on one hand, the translation of Ssangongnu evidences East Asia's rapid accumulation of experiences of cultural translation both at home and abroad (the West) whereas on the other, the translator's recognition of "non-Joseon things" indicates what the people of the day might have identified as "indigenous things."