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| Winners of the 13th Korean Literature Translation Awards pose for a photo at a restaurant in Seoul before the awards ceremony Wednesday. From left are Seong Cho-lim, Kwon Eun-hee, Andrea de Benedittis, Pascale Roux, daughter of Genevieve Roux-Faucard, and Lee Tae-yeon. / Courtesy of LTIK |
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| Andrea de Benedittis, one of the winners of the 13th Korean Literature Translation Award, speaks to the press. |
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| Zhang Li Li, one of the winners of the 14th Korean Literature Translation Awards for New Career Translators, speaks to the press. |
The winners of the 13th Korean Literature Translation Awards and the 14th Korean Literature Translation Awards for New Career Translators gathered Wednesday before the award ceremony and spoke of the difficulties of translating Korean literature into other languages.
"It's always difficult to translate dialects. It sounds awkward when we translate it, so sometimes we have to get rid of it," said Andrea de Benedittis, one of the winners of the 13th Korean Literature Translation Awards. He translated author Kim Young-ha's "I Have the Right to Destroy Myself" into Italian, "Ho Il Diritto di Distruggermi" and is a seasoned translator of 10 years who has translated other noted Korean novels into Italian.
"Also, in order to properly deliver the cultural context, we need to explain the historical background, but local publishers won't allow us to add footnotes. Properly delivering the tone of the writing itself is another difficulty," he said.
Four teams of professional translators were awarded Wednesday with the Korean Literature Translation Awards. Other award winners include Lee Tae-yeon and Genevieve Roux-Faucard who translated author Han Kang's "Breath Fighting" into French, "Pars, le Vent se Leve"; Kwon Eun-hee and Seong Cho-lim who translated Bae Suah's "Sunday Sukiyaki Restaurant" into Spanish, "El Restaurante de Sukiyaki"; and Vu Kim Ngan who translated author Jeong Yu-jeong's "Seven Years of Darkness" into Vietnamese, "7 Nam Bong Toi."
The awarded works were books which have already been translated and published by local publishing companies overseas. Of the 76 works submitted in 19 languages, a total of 14 made it to the finals and four were selected as winners. Judging criteria included how faithful the translation was to the original work, how well-refined the works were in terms of literary perfection, and how smooth the style of writing was. Judges consisted of foreign publishers and professors of Korean literature.
"It was difficult to translate the abundant usages of onomatopoeic and mimetic words. Because our publishers don't allow footnotes, I had to explain terms such as hanbok. The French don't like repetitive expressions so I tried to get rid of those," said Lee one of the winners.
This year was also the 14th year of the Korean Literature Translation Award for New Career Translators given to novice translators, an event which began in 2001. Among the 192 works from seven countries, a total of eight award winners were announced. They were Julianne Kelso and Jennifer Cho An for English, Na Eun-joo for French, Cho Young-eun for German, Daniel Rodríguez Cornejo for Spanish, Anna Dudinova for Russian, Azumi Junko for Japanese and Zhang Lili for Chinese.
"It was difficult to read between the lines. I wasn't quite sure what the author really wanted to deliver to the readers," said Zhang Li Li, who translated Young Young's "Summer" into Chinese. She works as a simultaneous interpreter and translator in Korea and was the only person who lives in Korea among the rookie award winners.
"What was difficult about translating Korean into English was to transfer informal and formal tone of speeches that exist due to social hierarchy. Also, certain titles such as unni which can be used in different contexts or translating chonsoo, the degree of relationship in the family tree, were difficult," said Julianne Kelso from Canada, a graduate of East Asian Studies at Toronto University. She translated Eun Hee-kyung's "Venus Girl."
Azumi Zunko from Japan, who works as a high school administrator, said, "People think Korean and Japanese are similar so it would be easy to translate, but there are of course difficulties. Japanese novels have a clear distinction in speeches between men and women while Koreans' don't. Also, it was difficult to distinguish the hapnida and haeyo styles of speech."
The translation awards are awarded by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea and are the only government-sponsored literature awards in Korea.
