Author: Lee, Sang-Bin
Keywords: fictional characterization, Nalgae, Halliday’s transitivity, reader-response questionnaire survey

Supervisor: Prof. Kwak, Joong-Chol
Awarding institution: Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), Seoul, Korea
Completion date: Aug. 2011

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The present study aims to demonstrate how the translator’s lexicogrammatical choices can change fictional characterization, how M.A.K. Halliday’s transitivity system can be exploited to reveal such changes, and whether changes in characterization are reflected in the inner world of the real readers. To achieve these purposes, the researcher selected Yi Sang’s short story Nalgae (‘Wings’) and its three English translations and conducted a comparative analysis of the characterizations of the “I”-protagonist in the four texts from a transitivity perspective. Then the researcher conducted a reader-response questionnaire survey of Korean-English bilinguals and native English speakers to verify the findings of the comparative textual analysis.

The main body of this study consists of three sections: (1) theoretical pursuit; (2) applied pursuit; and (3) empirical pursuit.