ed For Nobel Prize

Translator key in The Vegetarian’s Man Booker victory

Congratulations to Han Kang for winning the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, a respected award for literature. Han’s winning work, “The Vegetarian,” captures a woman tortured by nightmares, trying to live up to the title and literally become a plant. It was even adapted for the screen and made into a movie. In Korea, neither the novel nor the movie had much success, though, considering their out-of-mainstream genre.

Turning this otherwise bizarre and obscure novel into what the judging panel chairman Boyd Tonkin called an “unforgettable powerful and original” for English readers is English translator Deborah Smith, 28, who stood together with author Han during the award ceremony at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

As regards the tradition, by which the two split the prize money of $71,000, the role of Smith as translator is no less important than that of the author herself. As a matter of fact, without Smith, “The Vegetarian” may have withered to an untimely death, depriving English readers of a chance to enjoy Han’s novel, now a critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller.

According to the BBC, amazingly Smith didn’t learn Korean until seven years ago when she was 21. She took Korean, noticing a niche market where there were no Korean-English translators. Smith said that she had no cultural connection with Korea and its language, and compared herself to “somebody who learned it from a textbook.” It was her second attempt to translate the book at the urging of a publisher after a first “awful” attempt.

Korean literature ― novels, poems, and other writings ― has been in dire need of good translators, whose absence is the main drag blocking its globalization. Korea has a long proud tradition of literature, comparable to that of China and Japan, with a treasure trove of literature old and new often waiting to be translated into not just English but also into Chinese, French, Spanish and other major languages.

The purpose of such an endeavor is of course to let more people of the world enjoy our culture and help contribute to enriching the literature of the world. Han’s “The Vegetarian” is only the latest evidence that shows just what Korean literature can offer.

So far, governmental and private efforts have failed to incite linguistically talented foreigners or Koreans to work at translating Korean literature into other languages, making careers out of it. The Korea Times hosts the annual Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards ― this year will be the 47th ― to discover interesting works of literature and talented translators-to-be, but this alone is not enough to nurture their interests in becoming talented translators.

Also we have to reconsider the attitude of not taking translators seriously and start to regard them for being as creative as the authors themselves. Also on the plus side, the world is becoming keen to know about Korean culture thanks to hallyu, the Korean wave, that is cresting across media from K-pop to dramas. Our literature can only add to our package of gifts for the world.

For that, it goes without saying that now is the time to think about how to support Korean literature in translation if we want more Smiths who can help Korea generate Nobel laureates as well.