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This article examines Bong Joon-ho's, Snowpiercer and Park Chan-wook's, Decision to Leave with a view to identifying how different languages are used for characterization and a narrative, and the extent to which the meanings encoded in the interplay of different languages in the film are delivered to the audiences relying exclusively on English subtitles. We focus on the role played by these different languages and a translation device (e.g. translation machines) appearing in films. We argue that both translation devices and different languages used are carefully designed and devised by the directors not only to contribute to audiences' meaning-making processes and to enhance affective engagement with the film but also to challenge linguistic hierarchies. Translation machines are even used to defamiliarize languages used by characters and to maximize audiences' experiences. Yet, these are not necessarily considered during translation, which may deprive audiences relying on subtitles of affective experiences. This study ultimately argues that the differing approaches to representing translation demonstrate different public understandings of translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the manner in which Korean news outlets express different socio-political positions by way of framing and re-constructing news, this study examines the extent to which Muslim refugees are framed and represented in major newspapers—Hankyoreh on the political left and Chosun Ilbo on the right—between January and November in 2018, when the issue of Muslim refugees received unprecedented attention in Korea. Through analysis of the custom-built corpora, this study identifies discursive practices of the media institutions in relation to Muslim refugees in Korea and explains these practices in terms of the socio-political orientation of each newspaper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the flow of knowledge from and within Asia has a long history and continues to gain momentum, more attention has been paid to how western knowledge travels to Asia. Furthermore, the scholarship around knowledge transfer tends to focus on its historical and cultural patterns, leaving the role of translation largely unexplored. Thus, the essays in this issue aim to explore the less studied reverse direction of knowledge flow from East Asia to Anglophone cultures and within Asia. Focusing on the mediating role translation plays in this process, the authors contributing to this special issue explore a number of relevant issues across a range of cultural contexts through a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. Together, they demonstrate that a translator plays an active and agentive role in confronting and transplanting imported knowledge into local environments and is a key mediator in the exchange, de/reconstruction, and (re)production of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores how Islamic knowledge is negotiated, recontextualised, and produced for the receiving culture, as produced in the two extant, full Korean translations of the Qur'an – Kim Yong-sun's first translation (1970) and Choi Young-gil's retranslation (1997). Previous studies of Korean translations of the Qur'an have mainly concentrated on linguistic aspects based on comparative analyses of an Arabic source text and Korean translations. However, the way Islamic knowledge is mediated and recontextualised for the receiving culture, and the extent to which different agents in different sociocultural contexts intervene in the production of knowledge have largely been ignored. Through the systematic comparative analysis of both paratexts and translations, this essay argues the key Islamic concepts and doctrines were drastically changed in Choi's retranslation in a way to reflect different social and cultural norms and to adapt to readers in the 1990s in Korea. This suggests core concepts and terms in sacred texts can be changed in retranslations, depending on the different translational purposes, social and political contexts, translators' ideological views, and different agential networks of translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featuring both collective memories and individual stories of trauma, the War and Women's Human Rights Museum in Seoul serves as a site for visitors to learn about and experience the history, generate emotional responses to, and to shape their ethical outlooks. However, the role of translation as it is used for the benefit of international visitors, who most likely will have different mind-sets and cultural backgrounds from native Koreans, has not been examined to date. Therefore, drawing on Arnold-de Simine's 'memory museums' and Landsberg's 'prosthetic memory', triangulated with questionnaire surveys, this study examines the role of the English translations of the audio guide in the museum. This study ultimately argues that translation, in tandem with both a museum's narrative construction and its display strategy, can be a catalyst for reconfiguring public narratives about past events and the victims of them, by involving visitors in active social engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the ways in which collaboration in audiovisual translation is approached and portrayed by different parties involved in the transnational distribution and consumption of cultural products. It considers the case of the Korean translation of Spy, an American action comedy spy film that was praised by many critics for its feminist message. Prior to its release in Korea, the film became widely known for its translators, which included a high-profile comedian, comedy scriptwriters, and a professional translator. Drawing on the concepts of 'framing' and 'voice', the present study shows how collaborative translation was used as a tool by the distributor to promote and market the film and to extend its commercial reach. The paper also argues that today's viewers are not passive audiences. Empowered by social networks and digital devices, they actively share reviews and engage in discussions concerning translation method and quality, translators' identities, and translation effects. Linking collaborative translation to what they see as the 'flattening' of a feminist voice and the insertion in the film of humor that reinforces unequal gender relations, many audiences actively resisted the distributor's portrayal of collaborative translation as an optimal way to translate the film. The findings have implications for enhancing our understanding of collaborative translation work, translation of humor within the Korean cultural context, and perceptions on the connection between translation quality and collaborative translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang describes the massacre that took place in Nanking during the second Sino-Japanese war. Originally written in English, this book, which was published in the US in 1997, received wide attention and caused much controversy, not only in the US and Japan, but also in South Korea, where three different Korean translations have been published to date. This study examines The Rape of Nanking with a view to identifying various ways in which narratives encoded in the source text are reframed by the translator and the publisher to foreground particular events and to make them more salient in translation, while excluding, diluting, and downgrading others, in such a way so as to promote particular narratives. The contextual and textual analysis of the three Korean translations reveals that each translation is paratextually framed and temporally positioned, and also that they expand the scope of the original narrative to the South Korean setting by adding related events and issues that were of immediate interest to South Korean readers at the time of their publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]