Studia Phaenomenologica

Volume 5, 2005

Translating Heidegger's Sein und Zeit

Kwang-Hie Soh
Pages 179-184

The difficulties of translating Heidegger’s terminology into Korean

In this contribution, I sketch the historical context in which the first Korean translation of Sein und Zeit started and the difficulties faced during the process of translation. The translation took about ten years. It is quite difficult to understand Heidegger’s terms and more difficult to translate them into Korean because they have multiple meanings and nuances. So I translated those terms as literally as I could, but sometimes I had to take liberties. When needed, I explained the literal meaning and the usage of the terms in the footnotes.