A Study Of Original Text Of James S. Gale's The Cloud Dream Of The Nine

Guunmong by Manjung Kim (1637～1692) established itself as a canonic model for the following Korean classical literature. In Guunmong, a Buddhist Seong Jin, is expelled to the human world by his master, the great Buddhist Yuk Gwan, since he is infatuated with the mundane honor and wealth. The story tells the love of Master Yang to the eight women and their love to him. It is more than a nave tale of the relations of men and women under a social code so far removed from our own as to be almost incredible.So far the novel has its English translation, entitled as The Cloud Dream of the Nine by James S. Gale in 1922. Gale was born in Canada in 1863, graduated from Toronto University in 1888, and was sent to Korea as a missionary by YMCA. He published a Korean-English dictionary, translated the Bible into Korean, and also translated Korean literature into English and English literature into Korean. Working for several decades as a Presbyterian missionary in Korea, he was known as a distinguished scholar in Korean Studies among missionaries.However, Guunmong has so many extant editions and it is difficult to demonstrate, so it is necessary to ascertain what characters the premiere book was written. Moreover, the two versions of Korean and Chinese texts were known to the world almost at the same time before Gale's translation version. Hence, it increases more difficulty to find out the real original text.There are three theories about the premiere text:the first is that Korean version is the earlier one; the second is that the initial creative work must have been written in Chinese rather than Korean; the third is that the novel was written bilingually with Korean and Chinese. Therefore, there are three different opinions on which one is the original text of The Cloud Dream of the Nine by Gale; the first is that Korean version is the original text; the second is that Chinese version is the start text; the third is that Korean version and Chinese version are the same as the fundamental texts.This dissertation aims to analyze the three different texts of Guunmong written with Korean, Chinese and English, applying theories of translation, acceptance esthetics and linguistics, so as to get an all-around research. and make a cross-compare between Korean and Chinese texts, Korean and English texts, and also Chinese and English texts. Finally it elicits the conclusion that Chinese text is the original text of the translation novel.The literature translation plays an important role in the cross-language literature communication and it connects writers and readers with the text sharing the aesthetic experience. Therefore, the original text, the translator and the translation text are the dialectical unity that interact and affect each others.