By Han Sang-hee
Staff Reporter
For some, translation is a gate connecting two worlds. But for Jae-won Edward Chung, the grand prizewinner in poetry at the 39th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards, it is more than just literature.
``Translating is very personal for me. It's tricky because translating is often discussed in terms of the public good. It's supposed to represent other cultures, the way they live, the way they see the world and so forth. But what motivates me to translate is the opportunity to investigate my own bilingualism, which, before I began translating, was a rather peripheral part of my life,'' Chung told The Korea Times.
Born in Seoul, he immigrated to the United States when he was ten years old, and like many young Koreans raised overseas, mastered Korean and English.
``I used English outside the home and Korean with my parents. The divide was astonishingly clean, in retrospect, and sustained over a decade-and-a-half. But when I'm translating, the bilingualism, the different grammar and the implicit cultural values of those languages take center stage. It's stimulating for me intellectually and emotionally,'' he said.
Chung has been recognized for his work in translating in the past, having won the Commendation Award last year for his work in fiction. As award rules forbid entering the same category twice, he geared up for poetry and along came American poet Frances Justine Post to help.
``Translating is never easy nor should it be. It was interesting to work with Justine, because I needed her to make sure what I translated sounded and felt like poetry. I would give her a draft of a translation and she would change it and I would say, `You can't do that. You changed the meaning.' And she would say, `But the way you had it doesn't make any sense.' So we would have these editorial scuffles between drafts,'' he said.
Chung also mentioned that he was amazed by her discovering phrases that he had not noticed, despite the fact that she did not speak Korean.
``She would do this by picking up a trope or metaphor from early in the poem. If it was suspiciously dropped later or warped in an unsuccessful way, she would ask me about it. Then I would go back to the original and I would realize I had misread it. Moments like that definitely made me believe in the collaborative process,'' he added.
Already an aspiring writer himself, Chung has translated short stories by Eun Hee-kyung, Kim Gyun-uk and Jeon Sung-tae (among others) and translates for the Korean Literature Institute, where he received the Best New Translator Award last week. His translating and literary background have given him insight, both as a translator and in terms of the quality of Korean translations, and he said that there was a need for higher quality and greater appreciation for translation.
``It actually seems like Korea does a lot to promote its culture abroad. I'm more concerned about the quality of its translations and what they end up meaning for Koreans at home and abroad,'' Chung said, who is ambivalent about the way translators are sometimes asked to become wholesale promoters of Korean fiction, as if it were a categorically definable (and salable) genre or a brand. ``I think the ideal situation would be for each translator to speak for (or write about) his or her works as a very specific historical, linguistic and artistic encounter,'' he added.
For more information about Chung and his work, visit www.impossibletransfer.com