Translating Little Monk

Decided finally to start translating Little Monk (Tongsûng 童僧) (director Joo Kyung-jung, 2002), a sympathetic, humorous and little sad story of a child monk, young monk and an old monk. I have tried in vain to contact the movie company and the distributor to get a copy of the Korean manuscript, but now I'll have to do with the English translation. Well, even that's better than doing the job directly from the video: I'm not that good in Buddhist terminology, and the broadcasting company pays only 50% more for translating without a manuscript, which takes twice as much time. I don't cut corners when translating for tv, even though there are very few here who could detect flaws, but this time the Buddhist terminology gives some creeps. I'm not even sure how the k'ûn sûnim used as a term of address for the old master should be translated. (Terms of address and reference always give the most trouble.) Update. Figuring out a handy term which doesn't actually exist but describes the term to be translated understandably is one of the small delights of this work. So the ch'ilsôngdang (칠성당 七星堂) became Otavapyhättö. Here's one review of the film. Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: litetature/movies ∙ Koreanlanguage ∙ Korea-Finland