Bureau of Interpreters
37°34′20″N 126°58′29″E / 37.5723°N 126.9748°E
Bureau of Interpreters | |||||||
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Korean name | |||||||
Hangul | 사역원 | ||||||
Hanja | 司譯院 | ||||||
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The Bureau of Interpreters or Sayŏgwŏn was an agency of the Joseon government of Korea from 1393 to 1894 responsible for training and supplying official interpreters. Textbooks for foreign languages produced by the bureau aimed to accurately describe contemporary speech and are thus valuable sources on the history of Korean and the various foreign languages.
History
In a country surrounded by linguistically distinct neighbours, Korean diplomacy has always relied on interpreters.[1] They were a vital part of the national foreign policies of sadae 'serving the great' (i.e. China) and gyorin 'neighbourly relations'.[2] King Chungnyeol of Goryeo established the T'ongmun'gwan (通文館 'Office of Interpretation') in 1276 to train interpreters in Chinese and (possibly) Mongolian.[3]
In 1393, the second year of the
Languages
A memorial from 1394 mentions instruction in Chinese and Mongolian.[8] The most important and most taught language was always Chinese, reflecting Korea's key foreign relationship and the sadae policy.[9] Each year, three or four delegations were sent to the Chinese court, including about 20 official interpreters.[10] Some of the most promising students were included, to give them immersive practice.[11]
The study of Mongolian had originally been introduced when Goryeo was a vassal state of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. After the collapse of the Mongol empire, Joseon Korea had few dealings with the Mongols, but Mongolian language skills were retained as a strategic measure, in case the Mongols should again rise and threaten Korea.[12]
Japanese and Jurchen became regular subjects in 1414 and 1426 respectively.[13] Together, these were known as the 'four studies' (Sahak 四學), with Jurchen later being succeeded by Manchu.[13] The
Interpreters
The bureau was responsible for training interpreters, with about 100 students in the 15th century, increasing to over 200 in the 18th century,[17] In addition, branch schools were established near the frontiers in the early 15th century:[17]
- Instructors in Chinese were located in the main cities along the route to China: Uiju.[18]
- Instructors in Japanese were located in Busan and other southeastern ports.[19]
- Instructors in Jurchen (later replaced by Manchu) were located in towns along the northern border: Uiju,
A school was established on Jeju Island in 1671, teaching Chinese and Japanese.[21] There were no local schools for Mongolian until the late 19th century, as there were no Korean contacts with the Mongols.[20]
The bureau administered the interpreter's examination, one of the gwageo (civil service examinations).[22] The examinations for the technical professions – interpretation, medicine, astronomy and law – were considered of lower status than the literary examination and disparaged as "miscellaneous".[23] As with the other categories, regular examinations occurred every three years, but there were also special examinations at various times.[24] The examination for each language began with a preliminary stage, from which the best performers advanced to a "re-examination" stage for final selection of a prescribed number of interpreters.[24] Each stage consisted of two parts, a test (oral for Chinese, written for other languages) and a translation of part of the Joseon legal code (Gyeongguk daejeon).[25] Local examinations were offered in Chinese only, in the three cities on the route to China.[26]
The profession of interpreter was continually denigrated by officials of the dominant yangban class.[14][27]
Various kings, mindful of the need for skilled interpreters, sought to raise the status of the profession, both by encouraging yangban youths to become interpreters and by trying to elevate interpreters to yangban status.[28]
Both policies failed, but the supply of interpreters was maintained through regulations requiring provincial governors to supply talented youths for training.[29]
The social status of interpreters was eventually resolved through the formation of the
Publications
The bureau produced a series of multilingual dictionaries, glossaries and textbooks. These works were repeatedly revised or replaced to keep up with changes in the target languages during five centuries.[31] They are valuable sources on the history of Korean and the other four languages.[32][33][34]
There was a glossary for each of the foreign languages: the Yŏgŏ yuhae (譯語類解) for Chinese, Mongŏ yuhae (蒙語類解) for Mongolian, Waeŏ yuhae (倭語類解) for Japanese, and Tongmun yuhae (同文類解) for Manchu.[35][36] In addition, the Han Ch'ŏng mun'gam (漢清文鑑) was a glossary of Chinese, Korean and Manchu.[37] The Pangŏn chipsŏk (方言集釋) covered Korean and all four of the foreign languages.[38]
In choosing textbooks, the focus was on fluency in the spoken language. Where foreign works were used, vernacular literature or elementary school texts were preferred to scholarly literature written in formal language (usually Chinese). In other cases, new conversational texts were produced. Successful texts were translated into other languages.[39] Early textbooks contained only a foreign text, but after the introduction of the Hangul alphabet in 1446, they were annotated with pronunciations in Hangul and glossed in colloquial Korean.[40]
The prescribed textbooks for colloquial Chinese were the
Documents mention several early textbooks of Japanese, but the only one to have survived is a 1492 printing of the Irop'a (named after the Iroha presentation of the Japanese syllabary, with which the work begins).[48] For several others, it is possible to identify Japanese elementary school textbooks on which they were based.[49] In 1676, all of these texts were discarded and replaced with the Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ ('Rapid Understanding of a New Language').[50] This book and its revisions remained the sole official Japanese text for the following two centuries.[51]
More than 20 textbooks of Mongolian are mentioned in various regulations, but most have not survived.[52] The two extant texts are 1790 editions of the Mongŏ Nogŏltae and Ch'ŏphae Mongŏ, Mongolian translations of the Nogŏltae and Ch'ŏphae Sinŏ respectively.[53]
Jurchen textbooks are first mentioned in a regulation from 1469. They were presumably written in the Jurchen script, but none have survived in that form.[54] Two of them, both stories about children, are preserved in Manchu revisions from 1777, the Soa-ron (小兒論, 'Discussions of the Child') and P'alse-a (八歳兒, 'Eight-year-old Boy').[55] More important Manchu texts were the Ch'ŏngŏ Nogŏltae (清語老乞大), a translation of the Nogŏltae, and the Samyŏk Ch'onghae (三譯總解), based on a Manchu translation of the Ming Romance of the Three Kingdoms.[56]
References
- ^ Song (2001), p. 1.
- ^ a b Song (2001), p. 7.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 4–5.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 37.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 9.
- ^ Shin (2014), p. 84.
- ^ Kim (2019).
- ^ Song (2001), p. 11.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 7, 45–46.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 43.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 41.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 7–8.
- ^ a b Song (2001), p. 15.
- ^ a b Song (2001), p. 18.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 38–39, 45–46.
- ^ Shin (2014), p. 80.
- ^ a b Song (2001), p. 45.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 38, 45–46.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 39, 45–46.
- ^ a b Song (2001), p. 46.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 45–46.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 47.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 21.
- ^ a b Song (2001), pp. 47–48.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 48–49.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 48.
- ^ Wang (2014), pp. 76–80.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 30.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 19–20, 30.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 20.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 51.
- ^ Lee & Ramsey (2011), pp. 109, 111–112.
- ^ Kim (1989), pp. 38–42.
- ^ Frellesvig (2010), p. 299.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 72–73, 120–122, 151–155, 176–177.
- ^ Lee (1994), p. 131.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 177–180.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 83.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 51–52.
- ^ Osterkamp (2011), p. 83.
- ^ Kim (1989), p. 39.
- ^ Kim (1989), p. 38.
- ^ Lee & Ramsey (2011), pp. 111–112.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 55–56.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 76.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 23, 57–58.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 71–72.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 126, 130–134.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 126.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 142–143.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 143–151.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 85–86.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 93, 118–119.
- ^ Song (2001), p. 157.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 162–165.
- ^ Song (2001), pp. 169–175.
Works cited
- Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010), A History of the Japanese Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-65320-6.
- Kim, Jeongwook (7 April 2019), "ko:[역사의 향기/표지석] <30>사역원(司譯院)" [Scent of History / Sign Stone 30: Sayeokwon], Seoul Economic Daily, retrieved 1 May 2022.
- Kim, Youngman (1989), Middle Mandarin Phonology: A Study Based on Korean Data (PhD thesis), Ohio State University, OCLC 753733450.
- Lee, Ki-Moon; Ramsey, S. Robert (2011), A History of the Korean Language, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-139-49448-9.
- Lee, Pyong-geun (1994), "A Brief History of Korean Lexicography", Seoul Journal of Korean Studies, 7: 129–145, hdl:10371/63535.
- Osterkamp, Sven (2011), "Early Adaptations of the Korean Script to Render Foreign Languages" (PDF), in de Voogt, Alex; Quack, Joachim Friedrich (eds.), The Idea of Writing: Writing Across Borders, Brill, pp. 83–102, ISBN 978-90-04-21545-0.
- Shin, Michael D., ed. (2014), Korean History in Maps, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-107-09846-6.
- Song, Ki-joong (2001), The Study of Foreign Languages in the Chosŏn Dynasty (1392–1910), Seoul: Jimoondang, ISBN 978-89-88095-40-9.
- Wang, Sixiang (2014), "The Sounds of our country: Interpreters, Linguistic Knowledge, and the Politics of Language in Early Chosŏn Korea", in Elman, Benjamin A. (ed.), Rethinking East Asian languages, vernaculars, and literacies, 1000–1919, Leiden: Brill, pp. 58–95, ISBN 978-90-04-27759-5.
Further reading
- Wang, Sixiang (2020), "Chosŏn's Office of Interpreters: The Apt Response and the Knowledge Culture of Diplomacy", Journal for the History of Knowledge, 1 (1): 1–15, doi:10.5334/jhk.17.
External links
- Joseon dynasty translation texts at the Academy of Korean Studies
- Scanned texts at the Bibliothèque nationale de France:
- Pak t'ongsa sinsŏk ŏnhae (Coréen 20)
- P'alse-a (Coréen 21)
- Mongŏ nogŏltae (Coréen 22)
- Ch'ŏphae mongŏ (Coréen 23)
- Yŏgŏ yuhae (Coréen 24)
- supplement (Coréen 25)
- Chunggan nogŏltae ŏnhae (Coréen 26)
- Tongmun yuhae (Mandchou 104)
- Scanned texts at the Internet Archive: