2018 JSG Summer Hanmun Workshop (Intermediate)
목차
Description
The purpose of this course is to provide students an intensive training in what is commonly referred to as “classical Chinese,” or hanmun, which constitutes the nucleus of the literary languages of premodern China, Korea, and Japan. Because this workshop is intended for future researchers and scholars of premodern Korean culture in a broader context of East Asian civilization, which some call the “Sinosphere,” we will focus on the most fundamental sentence patterns and grammatical devices commonly used in hanmun, exploring some canonical texts that embody the linguistic and cultural grammars of classical Chinese literature. Each day, the class will study grammatical devices and patterns with simple sentences and read (excerpts of) regular hanmun texts for applied practice. We will read and critically analyze the texts, with which to formulate an academically-minded English translation of them. At the end of the workshop, students are expected to become familiar with different types of texts, to gain first-hand knowledge around the original texts of old Korean books, and more importantly, to become intellectually independent in their own future research critically engaging primary texts.
Class
A daily class is divided into three sessions. In Session 1 we read Pak Semu’s 朴世茂 (1487–1554) treatise to initiate students into Confucian literacy, Tongmong sŏnsŭp 童蒙先習 (Preparatory Learning for the Youth). Session 2 comprises studying syntactic and morphological patterns established by grammatical words, building up from the simplest forms to the more complex. This part of instruction will make use of the Hagŏjip 學語集 (Collection of Sentences for Learning), a late-Chosŏn primer for those who have finished character (hantcha) lessons and phrasal instructions. These two sessions will engage two foci of instruction: parsing (both vocal and visual) and close reading. In Session 3 we translate various excerpts from actual literary pieces from China and Korea. Reading the original text together, parsing its sentences, and carefully analyzing parts both syntactically and semantically, which will form a basic training of translation. The instructor will give lectures when needed, to reinforce the knowledge of grammatical words, information on reference tools, and relevant sociocultural context of fundamental importance. Each student will be responsible for looking up and learning unfamiliar hantcha, practicing to punctuate sentences that were studied in the previous classes, and participating in drafting translations. The outcome of translation will be archived and shared.
Instructor
Participants
(TBD)
수업진도 Schedule
Translation
We aim to practice academic translation. An academic translation should prove to be comprehensive to an intellectual reader for whom no previous knowledge of or about the text is assumed, rendered in a clear, precise, yet hermeneutically nuanced language. There are four aspects of concentration in our training::
- Faithfulness to the original text
- Linguistic clarity of the translating language
- Detailed annotation to integrate contextual and intertextual information
- Observance of academic convention for translation
강독과제 Reading and Translation Assignments
- List of Hanmun Text
