번역이란 외국의 문화를 수용하여 자국의 문화창조에 기여할 것을 목적으로 이루어지는 활동이다. 따라서 우리나라는 일찍부터 선진문화를 수용하기 위하여 번역이 성행하였고, 이를 통하여 새로운 문화를 재창조할 수 있었다. 그러나 번역활동이 구체적으로 국어국문학연구에 어떠한 영향을 끼쳤는가에 대한 연구는 미미한 실정이다. 그리하여 여기에서는 번역이 외국문화 수용에 미치는 영향과 번역의 기술, 번역의 효용을 살펴보았다. 그리고 번역이 국어국문학 연구와의 관련성과 함께 연구 영역을 번역사의 연구, 번역이론에 대한 연구, 번역의 영향으로 설정하고 이에 대한 연구의 필요성과 방향을 제시하고자 했다.
Translation is one of ways of adopting advanced culture in a country which is backward in civilization. In this respect, Korea has been very active in introducing advanced culture through translation from old times. Translation in Korea dates from the Shilla Dynasty, and today, translation is so prevalent as to be called its golden ages. Nevertheless, translation has been treated as incidental studies not as independent studies till now. However, it is the result of new understanding of translation that recently translation constructs its independent field of studies as tradutilogie. In terms of studying translation, we can think two fields of studies. One is a descriptive aspect of translation which is about how we translate, the other is an effective aspect which is about what we can do through translation. The former is a concern of translators, however, the later is a concern of scholars studying translation. Also, the subject of cannot but be dealt with from an effective standpoint. Therefore, there are following three fields of translation in studying Korean literature; the first, the establishment of the history of translation, the second, the establishment of the history of translation theories and the third, the effects of translation. Those subjects should be not only problems of translation, but also the key subjects of the study of Korean literature.