By Brother Anthony of Taize and Min Eun-kyung
With every year that passes, the task of the judges of the Korea Times' Translation Awards becomes more difficult. It is not just that there are more entries being submitted. The quality of the best entries is now so high that it is very difficult to distinguish between them.
This year, as always, there were far more fiction submissions than those for poetry, and in both categories there were a considerable number of really good translations. What criteria are we to follow in coming to a final decision? After all, what is most important in evaluating a translation? Readability? Accuracy? Even if we agree that both are very important, there comes a moment when we have to choose an award-winner and it is not easy.
On the whole, non-Koreans assume that a translation ought to read as smoothly in English as if it had been originally written in that language. Koreans, on the other hand, will begin to object if the translator removes or changes too many of the words or phrases or features that are vivid in Korean but have no obvious equivalent in English. They want the translation to remain explicitly rooted in Korean culture and feelings.
At the simplest level, problems already arise with the order of words in each phrase, and of phrases within a sentence. Korean order of words and phrases is usually almost the opposite of what is natural in English. Beyond that, so many Korean words have no English equivalent. The names of Korean food are an obvious example; colloquialisms in Korean often cannot be turned into natural English equivalents; and the Korean use of different levels of grammar depending on age and status has nothing to equal it. Besides, the specific Korean setting in society and history, and a work's assumed readership often make a story that is very clear to Koreans quite opaque to the non-Korean reader, a fundamental problem in choosing which works to translate.
We know that the people who did not receive an award will be wondering what was 'wrong' with their entry. As always, our initial screening allows us to eliminate those entries which failed to satisfy the requirements of basic English grammar and style. This year that left us with 4 of the 11 poetry entries and 9 of the 18 fiction entries. In addition, several people submitted entries in poetry without reading the detailed regulations, which specify that all the poems must be by the same poet, for example.
The translations that made the first ``cut'' were all of very high caliber. We were amazed at the overall quality of the short-listed fiction translations, especially. We were also rather puzzled by some of the works selected for translation, which we felt did not always seem to deserve the effort. But that does not play a role in our judging. Our final choice is made on the basis of a close scrutiny of the translation's accuracy as English, its close correspondence to the Korean original, and its general readability. For poetry, the poetic quality of the translation is important, of course. It is striking that in several fiction entries, even extremely good ones, we found basic errors in the sequence of tenses. English does not readily combine past and present tenses in the same sentence, for example, and in several cases we felt that the translators had probably not taken the time to re-read their text carefully.
As a result, we want to commend a number of translators who failed to win a prize, for we feel that with only a little more checking and polishing their work would be ready for publication. In some cases, we felt that they should have tried a little harder to represent in some way Korean idioms that cannot be translated literally. In other cases, we found signs that they had not exactly grasped the implications of the Korean, and had misrepresented what the writer was saying. While we are judging, we have no information about the translators' identities, of course.
The novella ``The Mongolian Mark'' by Han Kang receives the top prize for fiction. We were very impressed by the quality of this translation, which stood out clearly by the skill with which it negotiated the challenges of a difficult Korean style, rendering the story into good English prose that yet remained faithful to the original.
The work itself impressed us by its literary quality, and we felt that it deserved the labor put into translating it so well. This is one of the best translations of fiction we have seen in recent years. We have given the Commendation Award to ``Boy Meets Girl'' by Kim Do-eon for the skill of the translation, although we had reservations about the original work.
In addition to these translators, we want to praise very highly the translators of ``An Afternoon Disheveled'' by Ku Hyo-seo, ``The Lie of the Day'' by Jeong I-hyeon, and ``O Night Divide'' by Jeong Mi-gyeong. With only a very little more detailed revision, these translations will be of the highest quality and we look forward to seeing the translators publish them and other fine works in the years to come. In some ways we feel relieved that The Korea Times has allowed us to give only one Commendation Award, since it would not have been possible to say that any of these three runners-up was clearly better than the others. The difference between all these translations is minimal and if we were doing a workshop together, instead of a competition, they would all be ranked at the same, top, level. The errors we found are minimal and really matter mainly because we have to select a winning entry.
In poetry, the translations of poems by Gi Hyeong-do seemed to us clearly to deserve the first prize. Poetry presents special challenges to the translator, and there is always a wide variety of valid solutions. We felt that the shorter poems were especially well done. The Commendation Award recognizes the courage of the translator in selecting really difficult poetry and managing to produce some fine translations, even if we finally decided to place the Gi Hyeong-do poems first.
When translating poetry as poetry, there are those who insist that they are entitled to treat the original poem extremely freely, in order to create a convincing English poem. There are strong arguments in favor of this, Ezra Pound being a familiar model for this approach. In judging a translation contest, however, the judges will always want to feel sure that the entries are accurate representations of the originals, and too much freedom in omitting or changing the contents of a poem will then be seen as a fault. Some of this year's entries showed a degree of freedom that the judges felt was not justified, and they were marked down accordingly. That is not at all to say that they are ``bad translations.'' It was good to see that poetry translation remains popular in an age so strongly dominated by fiction.
It is a great joy to see the enthusiasm with which so many people have spent long hours struggling to render into English the works of some of Korea's most talented younger writers. Let no one be discouraged at not winning an award. Translation is a great challenge; it may take several years to master the fundamental methods of turning good Korean writing into good English. The Korea Times deserves our thanks for continuing to organize the awards. To the young translators of the future: take heart, good luck, and we look forward to seeing you again soon.