만청(晩淸) 시기 상하이 《점석재화보(點石齋畵報)》의 시각번역과 도상관습 (A Study of Visual Translation and Pictorial Conventions of the Late Qing Shanghai Dianshizhai Huabao)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국중국어문학회
· 수록지 정보 : 중국문학 / 96권 / 177 ~ 206페이지
· 저자명 : 민정기

초록

이 글은 1884년부터 14년 동안 상하이에서 발행된 그림신문 《점석재화보》에서 이미지의 의미작용이 어떻게 이루어지는지를 다룬 것으로, 이 화보의 대부분 기사화면의 이미지가 만들어지는 과정을 ‘시각번역’으로 보고 사례를 통해 그 과정을 추적하고 그 결과를 검토했다. 구체적으로는 시각번역의 과정에 물질적 조건들, 특히 도상관습이 어떻게 개재하며 그것이 어떠한 결과를 초래하지에 주목했다. 특정 조건 하에서 이루어진 시각번역은 의미의 축소, 확장, 변이를 가져왔는데, 많은 경우 도상관습의 사용에 따라 결국 새로움의 표현으로 나아가기 보다는 보수적 입장에 머물 수밖에 없던 것으로 보인다. 특정 인류 집단이나 사물을 관습적으로 표현하게 되었을 때, 특히 《점석재화보》에서 반복적으로 나타나는 것처럼 그것들이 시각적으로 물질화되었을 때, 그것은 익숙한 세계관 또는 편견을 재생산하면서 기존 체제의 유지에 복무하는 문화적 장치로 작동하기 십상이다.

영어초록

“Translation” although generally means communicating the meaning of a source language to a target language based on assumption of equivalence, it also has wider usages, as in “cultural translation”, “visual translation”, and “multimedia translation”. The latter usages of "translation" needless to say involves broader semiotic resources or modes of representation than the former. It includes image, color, music, and of course language. When we use the term “visual translation”, it means that we will be focusing more on interrelation between modes of representation than when we base our work on the term “visual representation”. In this paper I have examined how events told in words are “translated” into “visual language”, and the consequences, regarding the picture-reports of the late Qing pictorial magazine Dianshizhai Huabao(點石齋畵報; DSZHB).
The Shanghai based DSZHB was published every ten days for 14 years, from 1884 to 1898. Founded by Ernest Major, a British publisher who was already quite successful in news and publication business in Shanghai by the time he launched the DSZHB on the verge of the Sino-French war.
Most of the pictures in the DSZHB were visual “translations” of events pre-told lingually, few were “translations” of existing images, and much fewer were drawings of what was actually witnessed. Previous researches show that specific news contents definitely came before the drawings, a good part of them being articles from the Shen Bao. “Translation” that happens here is similar to what happens between languages, which is executed on the basis of equivalence of meaning and syntax that is imagined, assumed, experienced, and verified through countless practices.
In this paper, I have focused on the materiality of the DSZHB that condition the process and results of the visual translation, which includes the size of the paper space, the composition of the picture-reports, technology used, and most importantly the pictorial conventions.
Visual translation in the DSZHB relied heavily on pictorial conventions as the artists had to draw people, things, and places that they did not actually know for the sake of the visual “reality” that the magazine pursued. This, together with other material conditions brought surplus, shortage, and shift in meanings that the image carry in comparison to the lingual text. In rare cases the visual representation even ran counter to what the lingual text told. Overall, conventional use of pictorial resources inevitably gave the images of the DSZHB a rather conservative tone as in the case of illustrations of Ming and Qing novels, as discussed by Robert Hegel.

참고자료

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