Translators behind the rise of Korean literature in global scene

Sophie Bowman from Britain, seen here in a cafe in Seoul during a Jan. 18 interview, has translated numerous Korean poems and short stories into English. / Korea Times file

By Kang Hyun-kyung

The cover of novelist Shin Kyung-sook’s “Please Look After Mom”

“Powerful and unforgettable” was how reader Ruthie Jones described Shin Kyung-sook’s 2011 novel, “Please Look after Mom,” in her five-star review of the book on Goodreads, a website where book lovers can rate and review books. Jones also said the book will force readers to face difficult questions about their own relationships with people.

Following Shin’s successful English-language literary debut, children’s book writer Hang Sun-mi’s fable, “A Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly,” which was a best-seller in Korea, also became a literary sensation in Britain.

Thanks to magnificent translation, Korean literature has become accessible to readers around the world.

Sophie Bowman, a British national who has translated numerous Korean poems and short stories, said on Jan. 18 that many Korean stories are powerful enough to transcend cultural barriers and move Western readers. However, she said, those quality works are hardly discovered by foreign publishers partly because of the lack of translation.

“I think one of the problems is that there is a disconnection between everything happening in Korea and things happening overseas,” she said. “Recently, some works were picked up by British publishers and became very successful in Britain.”

The overseas success of some Korean writers has turned the public’s attention to the need for quality translation.

Not long ago, translation was considered an obstacle to Korean literary works’ overseas success. There was a popular belief that the messages of literary works get lost in translation, and translators were constantly being bashed and their reputations damaged.

The 1995 report released by the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute identified unsystematic translation and shortages of quality translators as some of the causes of Korean literature’s disappointing accomplishments overseas. It explained that Korean literary works were as great as any globally successful literary work, but they were not accessible to foreign readers because there were not many translations. And for those that were translated into several languages, their meaning and impact were lost in the translation, it said.

Today, however, excellent translators are proving such criticisms wrong. Los Angeles-based translator Kim Chi-young caused a media frenzy after translating Shin’s and Hwang’s books into English. The former lawyer was lauded for her accurate and faithful translations that retained the works’ tone and flow, enabling them to capture the hearts and minds of foreign readers. Kim’s translations helped Western readers easily follow the stories and feel strongly about them in the same way that Koreans do.

Sora Kim-Russell and Krys Lee are also rising stars in literary translation. Kim-Russell has translated several Korean works of fiction, including “Nowhere to Be Found” and “Our Happy Time.” Lee, the author of “Drifting House,” is now translating a Kim Young-ha novel that will be published in 2017.

Bowman, who is working on another book translation project, said translating Korean literary works is a daunting task because of certain challenges. Literary translators are much more than bilinguals. Not only do they need to be well versed in their first and target languages, they also need to possess a high level of literary skill.

“For me, the most difficult thing is to catch the things happening beneath the texts or something that is said, because I don’t know who said it,” she said. “In Korean, you can be a lot more vague. Korean writers seem to believe that people would immediately understand what they mean if they write something.”

According to Bowman, another tricky part is passages that are very short but have huge meaning, which makes it difficult for translators to carry over the feeling of certain dialogue or speeches from Korean to English.

She said dialectics and accents are other challenges facing translators. “It’s kind of impossible to translate them into English because there are no equivalents,” she said. “Therefore, it’s more about choosing certain colloquial terms or words.”

She undertook a year-long literary translation program at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) after she came to Korea in September 2011. Bowman said there has been a shift in focus in literary translation.

“For a long time, translation has all been about accuracy and faithfulness to the Korean text,” she said. “But that’s not always the best thing for the literary work.”

She noted that translators’ literary skills are equally important. “When you are translating something from the Korean language into another language, the target language is important, but so is the value that you put on literature.”

Writer Shin Kyung-sook made the headlines in 2011 after the English edition of her eighth work of fiction, “Please Look after Mom,” drew critical and public acclaim in the United States. The book was chosen as Amazon’s Best Books of the Month for April 2011. In The Wall Street Journal, essayist Pico Iyer describes the book as “the most moving and accomplished and often startling novel in translation I’ve read in many seasons.” New York Times best-selling author Jamie Ford also wrote that the book “is one of the books that changes us ... and the book that I could read again for the first time.”

“Please Look after Mom” was a best-seller in Korea, selling over 1.7 million copies. Experts say the great translation was critical in helping foreign readers easily follow the story about a mother in a Korean setting.

The term “mom” evokes tear-jerking memories for Koreans, and this cultural trait was what prompted Korean readers’ interest in the novel in the first place. In Korean culture, mothers are the icons of sacrifice because they put their well-being and safety behind those of their children and spouses. Often, mothers lose their identities if doing so is necessary for the betterment of their families.

Hwang’s “The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly,” published by Penguin Books USA two years later, proved that Shin’s overseas success is not an anomaly. The fable describes the journey of the main character, a hen named Sprout, to the world outside her cage.

Kim Seong-kon, LTI Korea president and professor emeritus at Seoul National University, said quality translation holds the key to the global success of Korean literature.

“Robert Frost once said poetry gets lost in translation,” he said. “Without translation, however, how will you be exposed to foreign literary masterpieces in the first place? So the importance of translation cannot be stressed enough.”

He said translators are critical in catapulting national literature to universal prominence. “They enable different cultures to interact and help people understand each other. Thus, quality translators are imperative.”