ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This study intends to analyze the characteristics of cultural translation, reflected in the Korean translation of Dean Koontz’s 1981 thriller novel The Eyes of Darkness, which has immediately become a significant bestseller worldwide in the context of COVID-19 Pandemic, regardless of the author’s marginal status as a thriller writer or the crime novel’s low literary status. Koontz’s novel has been revived in 40 years mainly in the context of the particular reference to the ‘Wuhan-400’ virus with 100% fatality in the novel. Despite the lack of similarities between the virus in the novel and the COVID-19 reality, Koontz’s novel has been recreated to be used as an effective political weapon in the U.S. to frame China as responsible for the COVID-19 Pandemic. The politically popular bestseller status of the novel with a recently generated cultural hegemony has resulted in the higher degree of faithfulness in the Korean translation despite the novel’s low aesthetic value and crime fiction genre characteristics. While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused public fear and prejudice, the Korean translation of Koontz’s novel has likely responded to the circumstances by recreating and amplifying prejudice and hatred against China as a result of faithful cultural translation.

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