THE HAND-COPIED SUTRAS OF KOREA IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND EQUIVALENCE IN TRANSLATION

In the Middle Ages, hand-copied sutras in South Korea played an important role in spreading Buddhism. Hand-copying functions similarly to translation in transferring something from one text to another. Despite this fact, previous studies have not examined it from the perspective of translation studies. The purpose of the research is to look at characteristics of the hand-copied sutras, based on the equivalence of translation. The sample in the research targets the texts of the hand-copied Diamond Sutra and the original text of the Diamond Sutra in the Tripitake Koreana. A literature review and a descriptive approach are applied to analyze the sample. The findings indicate that equivalent sentence structure, addition of sentence, typo, and substitution were discovered in the hand-copied Diamond Sutra. The equivalent sentence structure, the typo, and the substitution could be examined by formal equivalence, and the addition of the sentence could be checked by dynamic equivalence. It means that formal or dynamic equivalence operates in the hand-copied sutra. The research suggests that hand-copying and translation have a common attribute. However, the research has limitations not to look at more hand-copied sutras. Thus, further research is required to examine other hand-copied sutras of South Korea in the Middle Ages and needs to have objectivity and validity in the relation between hand-copying and translation.