Translation Awards Commendation Award in Fiction - Xin chao, Xin chao

Written by Choi Eun-young

Following is an excerpt from the translation by Olan Munson and Oh Eun-kyung

We moved back to Germany in January of 1995. Only a year had passed since our return to Korea after having lived in Berlin from ‘92 to ‘93. We flew into a place called Plauen, a small city which had been part of East Germany until five years earlier. The abandoned buildings, the bleak park, the men sitting at the tram stop, reeking of alcohol _ it was far from the Germany I had once known.

The day Mr. Ho first invited us to dinner, Mom pulled out and ironed a beautiful two-piece dress that she didn’t usually wear and prettied herself with makeup. She undid my hair, which was pulled back into a high ponytail, and fastened it into a tight French braid before taking out the black corduroy dress I wore to weddings. She dressed my two-year-old sister in new clothes, too. It had been a long time since I had seen my mom wearing makeup, and my young self thought she looked gorgeous. Mom checked her reflection several times in the building windows we passed by. It was a happy nervousness, it seemed. This was our first invitation to someone else’s home since moving to Plauen three months earlier.

“Xin chao.”

Mom used the Vietnamese word for ‘hello’ that she had memorized to greet Mrs. Nguyen, who stepped out of the front door to meet us. Mrs. Nguyen laughed warmly when I followed my mom’s lead with a “Xin chao” of my own, and she welcomed us in as if we were long-lost old friends. Mr. Ho was in the kitchen. Seeing his ruddy cheeks and his face full of childlike mischief, I liked him right away. Mr. Ho was my dad’s co-worker, and once he found out that I had been placed in the same class as his son Thuy, he had invited our family over for dinner.

Mr. Ho’s cooking was fresh and comfortable. I don’t know if I can exactly call food ‘comfortable,’ but I can’t quite describe Mr. Ho’s food without this word. There was meat stew, slowly simmered with tomatoes, and fragrant white rice, grilled shrimp, sauteed vegetables, fried dumplings which we squeezed lime wedges over. ‘Comfortable’ was how it all tasted.

After everyone had finished eating, the adults shared drinks and I followed Thuy over to the bookcase.

“I’ve been collecting these since I was six.” Thuy picked out some books for me, all of them Snoopy comics.

“Wanna read over there?” He pointed at a floor couch. The suede fabric was soft and comfy. I stroked the couch cushion with the back of my hand as I started to read one of the books. Snoopy, fooling around with Woodstock on top of the doghouse, looked just like Thuy. That’s how Thuy was at school. He got along with everyone and was always merry. Tall or short, active or introverted _ everyone seemed to like Thuy.

“You look like this guy.” Thuy laughed as he pointed at Woodstock. “When I first saw you, I actually thought you were Woodstock!”

For a moment, I thought he was calling me Woodstock because I was short and ugly, but seeing no malice in his ingenuous smile, I couldn’t be angry with him.

“I saw you last winter at the weekend flea market,” Thuy told me.

“How do you know it was me?”

“I saw you across the street from the park, too. That’s where your house is, right??”

“I mean, yeah I guess.”

I turned my eyes back to the comic book. I was starting to feel embarrassed about spying at him from the windows of my house. It felt like he somehow knew about how secretly glad I had been when I found out that we were in the same class.

My life in Germany is now hazy, like scenery outside a fogged window. But what I felt during that first visit to Thuy’s house, I can recall as clear as day. I remember the way they welcomed us in with open arms, how my mom’s face lit up at their gracious hospitality, the warm feeling brought by their acceptance, which had no precondition, the air of two families sharing food in the same space. How the hearts of disparate people can, in this way, join together through goodwill and kindness, I do not know. As an adult who has never managed to properly connect with a single person, I might even consider these past events strange.

Our first summer in Plauen, Mom had some difficulty with the dry weather. Her arms and legs were covered in white, flaky dead skin like a shedding snake, and she said she would wake up several times a night scratching at herself.

“I had the same problem when I first came to Germany. Summers are humid in Korea as well? It’s the opposite here, as you know. I used all kinds of lotions, and I still felt dry.”

Mrs. Nguyen gave Mom a cream that she had made herself, instructing her to use it every day after she showered, saying it would help with the itchiness. Thanks to Mrs. Nguyen’s cream, the rest of the summer went by smoothly for my mom. Mrs. Nguyen always seemed to know what the problem was without us having to say. Even when we needed to call a plumber or discuss some matter with the landlord, she would always come over to take care of things for us. Above all, Mrs. Nguyen provided my mom, shut up at home all day with a two-year-old child stuck to her hip, with company and conversation. Mrs. Nguyen said that Mom reminded her of the days when she had brought up Thuy by herself, that being alone for too long naturally led to being swallowed up in gloomy thoughts, and that Mom could call her whenever she wanted to talk.

We had dinner with Thuy’s family at least once a week, alternating between their house and ours. As summer began and the days grew longer, we would meet early Saturday evening and stay together past midnight and into the next Sunday. We ate together, and afterwards, the grown-ups played cards while I did jigsaw puzzles or read comic books with Thuy. I was unaware at the time, but thinking back on it now, it seems that my family and Thuy’s didn’t have any other close friends apart from each other.

On the days that the adults had a rather lot to drink, they would take turns and sing songs for each other. Mom sang Korean songs, and Mrs. Nguyen and Mr. Ho would sing Vietnamese songs. I remember them bursting into laughter at my mom who would bunglingly try to follow along with a chorus in a language that she couldn’t even understand.

“I can’t communicate with your dad,” Mom would sometimes say to me. The two of them acted as if the other person were invisible. That’s how it was during meals, watching TV, in the car. To the very end, they would never grasp the kinds of wounds this sort of behavior impressed onto me in my young age.

They told me that they had met through the German Literature department at their university and dated for quite a long time afterwards. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea at the time, that these two people, who now almost competitively ignored each other’s existence, had once loved each other profoundly. Daily, I prayed that they might someday be able to face each other when they spoke, that they might be able to easily share ordinary, everyday conversation, and that they would never divorce.

That’s another reason why I so liked our dinners at Thuy’s house. When we were with Thuy’s family, every now and then my parents would look at each other and laugh a little, and sometimes they would even tell Thuy’s family things about each other without any awkwardness between them. Once, I saw my dad tap my mom lightly on the shoulder on his way out to the balcony to have a smoke. I remember the look in my mom’s eyes as she unreservedly watched my dad laugh and talk, he being tipsy from the alcohol. It was an unimaginable scene when it was just the four of us at home. Neither before, nor after, this season in my life was I able to see Mom laugh so easily.

“You were especially lovely back then,” I told my mom one day. She replied that she didn’t remember our days in Germany very well, but anyway, it was nice of me to say.

Once summer had arrived in earnest, a dim light, like early evening, lingered in the air past ten at night. I liked how everything looked, bathed in blue, as the dim light slowly waned. A cool night breeze blew through the living room window, and I could hear the grown-ups chatting and laughing from the kitchen. I saw Thuy sleeping with his mouth agape as he always did around that time of night. As I watched the saturated color of the blue gradually fade while the streetlamps began to come to life one by one, I thought to myself that someday, I might miss this moment.

Thuy and I would sometimes run errands together to fetch bread or milk. When we did, Thuy would run so far ahead of me that I lost sight of him, but then he would run back. At first, I tried to run after Thuy, but once I realized that he would come back eventually, I travelled at my own pace as well. It always made me laugh seeing the look on his face as he ran back towards me after having disappeared up ahead. When our eyes met, he would throw back his head and strike an even more ridiculous pose while he ran.

We walked along opposite sidewalks on either side of the road when we ran errands together, out of worry that our classmates might tease us if they saw us walking around together.

“Woodstock!”

He always called me ‘Woodstock’ when it was just the two of us. Over time, the new name had me beaming. Among all those students who brushed by me over the course of frequent school transfers, no one had ever given me a nickname before.

It was only when we reached an alleyway in Thuy’s neighborhood that we walked side-by- side. Thuy’s sweat smelled of something like onions, or something like a sunbaked coin. Although it’s not like we talked about anything in particular, just walking together like that, I felt my heart soften.

Thuy did not have that touchy defiance characteristic of children his age. He chattered with Mrs. Nguyen about everything that happened to him at school, and he made everyone laugh by singing or performing impromptu skits, without a care or worry for what people might think. I mostly treated him like a younger brother when I talked to him, but every now and then I would offhandedly reveal something private, from deep within my heart. Because I thought that whatever I said, there was no way a kid like Thuy would understand. Thuy seemed fairly unconcerned about the things I said to him. ‘Oh I see.’ ‘Oh really?’ Listening to his absent-minded replies, I felt as though my pent-up emotions were being let out little by little.

“My mom and dad hate each other the most out of anyone.” That day, I laughed and spoke as nonchalantly as ever.

Thuy halted in his tracks and stood there for a moment, staring at me. He looked angry. It was such a sudden reaction, I didn’t know how to respond.

“Why would you laugh at something like that?”

Thuy strode ahead of me. I thought he would turn around and come back like he usually did, but this time he didn’t. At the time, I was a little taken aback by his reaction, but I didn’t take it too seriously. However, come high school in Korea, as I was cutting across the schoolyard at night after finishing after-school study hall, I happened to think of young Thuy’s face, Thuy who asked me ‘why would you laugh at something like that?’ I hadn’t truly known Thuy. Only after childhood had passed did I start to remember Thuy differently.

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Oh Eun-kyung

Olan Munson

Oh Eun-kyung is a freelance translator and a student at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea). Olan Munson is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin of Madison with a degree in Comparative Literature and also currently a student at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.

Oh started translating literature simply to share her favorite young Korean writers with her foreign friends, but the joy led her to the path of professional literary translator. “It was so much fun to think about words while translating and to discuss the story and cultural differences with friends afterward. It was also a very rewarding experience since I could introduce brilliant young writers to people outside of Korea even though it was only for a very few friends of mine,” Oh said.

Munson first became interested in translating Korean literature into English as a way to learn more about Korean literature. “I also became interested in translation as an artistic and philosophical practice during university,” Munson said.

The two worked together before on LTI Korea class assignments and Munson enjoyed the thoughtful way Oh translates.

“Translating as a team means that there’s always someone to bounce ideas off of and make tricky artistic decisions together. It’s been wonderful to be able to nuance my understanding of the story and of each word or syntax choice through our discussions. And of course, as native speakers of different languages, we’re able to fill in gaps in language knowledge for each other,” Munson said.

Oh and Munson translated Choi Eun-young's "Xin chao Xin chao,” appreciating the story’s delicate handling of an important and tragic detail in Korean history through the quiet, domestic life of two immigrant families.

“We liked how Choi Eun-young’s simple, observant writing style feels very approachable to younger readers, because of the way her stories focus on complex relationships, relatable characters, and global settings,” Oh said. “Choi Eun-young’s writing relies on emotional subtleties that are inherent to certain Korean words. This is often difficult to translate into English without amplifying the original word and thus swaying the reading experience in a certain direction.”

Oh and Munson believe that good translation occupies the space between the source and target languages.

“We hope that our translation can offer a new perspective to the text by creating a dialogue between the Korean text and readers in English,” Oh said.