Ceremony for 38th Translation Awards Held
By Sa Eun-young
Staff Reporter
The Korea Times awarded prizes to winners of its 38th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards at a ceremony held at a hotel in downtown Seoul Tuesday.
In addressing the talented translators, president-publisher of The Korea Times, Park Moo-jong, wished them ``success in the days to come on the occasion of winning this literary award.''
President Richard Wacker of the Korea Exchange Bank, which co-sponsors the competition with The Korea Times, expressed great appreciation towards the translators for providing a gateway to Korean literature and poetry. He also went on to encourage further work in translating because ``it is something that's important to bring people together.''
John Hak-sung Cha, the grand prize winner in the fiction category, who himself is a writer and translator currently based in San Francisco, attended the ceremony with novelist Mun Hyung-ryul, author of ``Bicycling Over the Ocean,'' the full-length novel he translated to win the award.
As Mun congratulated Cha on the award, he said he felt that in translating, `` the gap is not language but culture,'' and they were able to reach satisfying results after much struggling and talking problems out together.
As for Cha, he showed enthusiasm in creating a network among fellow translators to produce even better works in the future. ``I hope we make connections, share our thoughts and try to make ourselves a little better in what we do,'' he said after receiving his prize.
In line with this, most award winners showed their commitment to translating Korean literature into English as Blair Lee, who won the commendation award for fiction for translating Kim Jung-hyuk's novel, ``Eskimo, This is the End," noted that it had been a ``rewarding experience and something I hope to continue in the future.''
Another commendation award winner for fiction, Jae-won Edward Chung, who translated Hwang Jung-eun's ``The Door," also showed keen interest in further translation work, as he referred back to the judges' report saying, `` there is a lot of great Korean literature that still needs to be translated and it is encouraging that many people take this enterprise very seriously.''
Yoon Chae-eun and William Morley, who won the grand prize for poetry for their co-translation of Ko Jae-jong's ``Splendor,'' attended the ceremony also.
Yoon expressed gratitude to the poet for his wonderful piece of work, and showed interest in continuing translation work. ``Hopefully I'll get another chance to spread Korean literature to the world," she said.
Morley showed appreciation towards his partner in the translations, as well as respect for the judge of the event, Brother Anthony, as most of ``my experience of Korean poetry comes from his translations,'' he said.
The Korea Times Modern Literature Translations Awards was launched in 1970 and has since played a vital role in presenting local literary works to the world and recognizing new translators.
The winners were selected from this year's 13 entries in the poetry category and 15 in fiction by Brother Anthony, a professor emeritus of Sogang University, and Min Eun-kyung, an associate professor of Seoul National University's Department of English Language and Literature.