Translator as renaissance woman
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By Chi-Young Kim
My most uncharacteristic achievement came at age 15. Somehow, I was chosen as a Kumon Ambassador for my math skills. I have vague memories of this: I remember wearing something uncomfortable, going to a ceremony, receiving a medal, and standing at the front of the room. I might still have that medal somewhere. I was not a math nerd. The only reason I was chosen to be a Kumon Ambassador was because this was in Canada, not Korea.
In Korea, I was always average or worse when it came to math. Numbers do not speak to me, and when anything resembling math or logic comes my way, I feel my brain shutting down. Since we moved back and forth so frequently between Korea and North America, my mother worried we would fall behind when we returned to Korea. No wonder. My Korean peers in second grade were already learning the multiplication tables, when I was learning addition in my American classroom.
To ensure that I would at least be able to follow along, when I was in the second grade my mom made me recite the multiplication tables every morning on my way to school. That was shortly before we were to return to Korea, and she feared I would be hopelessly lost back home. I would begin ``reciting” the multiplication tables while brushing my teeth so that I would be almost done by the time we were out the door.
My mom, insisting that she didn’t hear me, would make me start over. We fought almost every morning while my five-year-old sister earnestly sided with me, vouching that she’d heard me recite them. Unfortunately for me, my sister didn’t even know how to read yet, so her testimony was not taken at face value.
When I returned to Korea in the middle of the third grade, I was in for a rude shock. Math class was beyond difficult. One particular problem remains vivid in my head: we had to calculate the distance a stupid deer traveled as it went to a pond and then backtracked for some reason.
As I dissolved in tears, my parents would act out the scene, trying to help me understand. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why that idiotic animal kept going back and forth to the watering hole.
Having begun well behind, I never fully caught up. One of my mother’s favorite anecdotes goes like this: I’m in fourth grade. It’s a weekday, and she’s at home. The phone rings. It’s me, calling from my elementary school’s coin-operated public phone. I crow, “Mom, I only got 13 questions wrong on my math test!” and hang up. She shakes her head in dismay.
By the time I was in high school, I was a middling student at best. I ended up graduating with something like a B- average, of which I was prouder than I probably should have been. In college, I thankfully tested out of the math requirement (apparently even a so-so Korean math student was considered very advanced for America), and never looked back.
As is often the case with life, I now wish I had paid more attention. I am working on a translation right now with a main character who is a math whiz and therefore sees the world mathematically. Much of what is discussed in the book makes little sense to me. Furthermore, while I can grasp the basics of the math in the original Korean, I am struggling to translate it, as I didn’t take high-level math in English.
A dictionary is becoming a requirement. I’ll have to pass everything by friends and family who are very good at math before I submit the manuscript. Because I have to stop to look up concepts so often, I am having a hard time entering the zone, that blissful state where everything is fitting together nicely and I can work fluidly for hours on end.
Even though fluency in two languages and a love for literature should really be the only requirements for a literary translator, being a renaissance woman would truly serve a translator well. The more subcultures and segments of knowledge you are intimate with, the more authenticity you can bring to a translation. Equally important is a large network of trustworthy experts willing to do a quick read-through for the price of a meal or eternal friendship.
If I’d only taken my duties as Kumon Ambassador seriously, I might have been in less of a pickle right now.
Chi-Young Kim is a literary translator based in Los Angeles. Her newest translation, Hwang Sun-mi’s “The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly,” was released by Penguin Classics on Nov. 26. Contact her at chiyoung@chiyoungkim.co
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