[One Sip of a Book] The Birth of K Literature... The Dilemma of Translation

by Seo Miteum

Published 05 Sep.2023 09:00(KST)

Editor's NoteSome sentences encapsulate the entire content of a book, while others instantly resonate with readers, creating a connection with the book. We excerpt and introduce such meaningful sentences from books.

Over the past several years, the global status of Korean literature has changed remarkably. Whereas in the past efforts were made to introduce Korean literature to the world, it is now no exaggeration to say that the world is striving to understand our literature. Discussions on the rights and licensing of Korean literary works have also greatly increased. Many people participate in this process, among them translators. This book contains the stories of translators who struggle to convey not just the literal meaning but the literary essence. It explores the concerns and efforts involved in the creative translation process and the challenges they face. It features candid and serious accounts from leading authorities in Korean modern poetry translation, An Seonjae, and Korean modern novel translation, Bruce Fulton, as well as Jamie Chang, who translated Cho Namjoo’s novel "82nyeonsaeng Kim Jiyoung (Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982)," Lauren Alvin and Bae Suhyun, who translated Kim Hyesoon’s poetry collection "Han Jan-ui Bulgeun Geoul (A Glass of Red Mirror)," Lizzie Butler, who translated Yoon Go-eun’s novel "Bam-ui Yeohaengjadeul (Travelers of the Night)," and Jake Levin, who translated Kim Ideum’s poetry collection "Hysteria." These translators have been nominated for and won major international literary awards, helping to introduce Korean literature to the world.

[One Sip of a Book] The Birth of K Literature... The Dilemma of Translation

The difficulty in structuring trauma into a novel lies in maintaining an appropriate narrative distance from the horrific subject matter. To achieve this, the author expands the narrative scope beyond a single individual’s experience to encompass the collective suffering of all those traumatized. Furthermore, the narrative distance is constructed by not relying solely on the protagonist’s memories of the ‘comfort women’ but continuously showing the external environment and movements from the protagonist’s present perspective. ... The author merged the experiences of many ‘comfort women’ into the protagonist and provided detailed sources for these memories in 316 footnotes.

‘Hoe-eumbu (perineum)’ is a term rarely used in everyday life or even in poetry. So why did the poet choose this word? Would target language readers understand it if translated literally? I sensed the strangeness and discomfort they would feel reading this poem. Yet, it was not an option to replace it with an easily imaginable image at the translator’s discretion. I believed that preserving the poet’s deliberately chosen word was the only way to convey the unfamiliar atmosphere Korean readers experienced when reading the original.

Professional translators fully understand the impact literary works have on readers. This is because the translator begins the work by becoming an open-minded, passionate reader themselves. In contrast, neural network machines neither read literature like humans nor are moved by it. Therefore, they cannot be trained on how and what to touch in a reader’s heart. I believe that when a human translator’s experience as a reader combines with their own creative imagination, it demonstrates a qualitative superiority incomparable to machine translation.

Translated words do not emerge from a free and creative flow. They are the result of a painstaking compromise involving repeated reading and efforts to understand, imitating and recreating the original poem using words and grammar from another language (mostly at the semantic level). The translator is not the original poet. Even if the final product is called ‘adaptation’ rather than ‘translation,’ there is no room to betray the poet and work freely. The greatness enjoyed by a great poet is a kind of greatness that no matter how talented a translator is, they cannot possess.

When translating foreign literature into Korean, most serious translators, editors, and publishers prefer to include footnotes even at the risk of interrupting the flow of the text. This is because both translators/publishers and readers respect the differences between the two languages and cultures and believe there is something to learn and adopt from the other side. On the other hand, in the English-language publishing world, footnotes that disrupt the flow of translated literature are taboo. Even if it means paraphrasing or even mistranslating, they tend to choose what reads well in English.

Translation is also a task that requires a long time of experimentation and failure. Many translation projects begin with experiments and failures, uncertain whether any usable results will emerge or none at all. Translation work, which requires considerable time for experimentation and failure, feels quite similar to poetry writing, even if the form differs. Labor free from economic or market-oriented goals leads to free imagination about creativity and artistic creation. Translators who say they are simply led by the process of translation are exactly such cases.