New publication by Kyung Hye Kim in Contesting Translation: Studies in honour of Mona Baker.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003531098-11
Abstract
This chapter discusses the implementation of biopolitics in South Korea and examines the extent to which Korea Women’s Associations United (KWAU), a Korean nongovernmental organization, employs translation as an avenue through which to resist and contest prevailing narratives surrounding women’s reproductive health in the country. An open-access specialized corpus called the Sustainability and HEalth corpus and a custom-built translational corpus comprising English source texts chosen by the activist organization alongside their corresponding Korean translations are examined; a corpus-based method is used to identify recurrent patterns in the institutional texts and translations of interest. The analysis reveals KWAU’s conscious and sustained effort to introduce and normalize the concept of “sexual and reproductive health (and) rights (SRHR)” within the local discourse, aiming to enhance its acceptance and resonance among community members. At the same time, however, the findings show that KWAU’s discourse on reproductive health is influenced and shaped by the discursive frameworks promoted by international health institutions such as WHO. This suggests that an activist organization, while seeking to challenge dominant ideologies, may simultaneously be influenced by the very power structures and institutional discourses they engage with, thereby potentially reproducing, rather than subverting, elements of the existing social order.