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

Abstract

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-Simon 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 wordcloud analysis on the adjectives that Korean scholars used to describe the relationship between theory and practice. © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company. All rights reserved.