[INTERVIEW] New generation of Korean literary translators brings more diverse voices to English market

Translators' behind-the-scenes roles deserve wider recognition

By Park Han-sol

On the evening of March 10, Anton Hur was alone in his apartment in Seoul, spending his fifth day in self-isolation after testing positive for COVID-19.

What interrupted his aimless stream of thoughts that day was an email from the British publishing house, Honford Star, saying, "Congratulations!"

With that, Hur became longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, one of the world's most significant awards celebrating literature translated into English, as the translator of Chung Bora's genre-defying short story collection, "Cursed Bunny." Now, the rest of his days in quarantine could be spent musing about how his life might change.

Then, another email came, this time from the publisher Tilted Axis Press. Park Sang-young's queer novel, "Love in the Big City," which he had also translated, had been nominated for the International Booker prize as well!

"That was when I was like, is this a joke? A prank? A COVID-19 fever dream?" the 41-year-old translator recalled during a recent interview with The Korea Times.

More than 100 translated works of fiction published in the United Kingdom and Ireland compete for the prize every year, including those penned by Nobel laureates. And two out of the 13 nominated works had been translated by him.

"The feeling wasn't like joy, but it was just incredulity, like the literal meaning of the word where you don't believe that this is happening because it sounded so absurd."

It was announced on Thursday that "Cursed Bunny" made it on to the prize's shortlist of six titles.

Anton Hur is a Seoul-based translator behind Chung Bora's "Cursed Bunny," which is in the running for the 2022 International Booker Prize. His other translations include Park Sang-young's "Love in the Big City," Shin Kyung-sook's "The Court Dancer," Kang Kyeong-ae's "The Underground Village" and "Hwang Sok-yong's "The Prisoner." Korea Times photo by Lee Han-ho

In addition to the Booker Prize's announcement, a string of translated Korean publications have recently made headlines after taking home notable international literary awards. Yun Ko-eun's "The Disaster Tourist," an eco-thriller with a feminist edge, became the first Korean text last year to win the Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger from the U.K.'s Crime Writers' Association (CWA).

The book had been translated into English by Lizzie Buehler, a Ph.D. student in comparative literature at Harvard University, who also worked on Yun's short story collection, "Table for One," slated for publication next year.

"I first translated 'Table for One,' or at least part of it, as my senior thesis as an undergraduate. I really liked it," Buehler told The Korea Times, adding that she ended up getting in touch with the author herself to translate the entire book, and later "The Disaster Tourist."

However, in Korea, the celebration of such literary achievements and authors often excludes translators. When the translators do come into the discussion, the debate often fails to move beyond a simple compare-and-contrast session between the source and the translated language and the age-old argument that the "essence of Korea" was somehow "lost in translation."

What is woefully underrepresented is the sheer extent of the role played by literary translators beyond the art of translating. In fact, the translation itself only accounts for a fraction of their job description.

"This magical publishing fairy who just gives jobs to translators doesn't exist. I am the magical publishing fairy who goes around looking for books to translate," Hur said. "I have to basically create my own job."

Literary translators are tasked with establishing direct contact with the authors and Korean publishers, who are usually the rights holders of the literary works, to request permission to do a sample of the piece they are interested in. Already at this stage, they should brace themselves for the worst-case scenario: outright rejection, with some local publishing houses unfamiliar with the process even questioning their motives or identity.

Even after getting the necessary rights and finishing up the sample, the job is far from over. Now, it's time to do a sales pitch of the work to Anglosphere agencies and publishers by writing up a book proposal, making appropriate comparisons to books in English that may be similar to the one in question, among others.

Lizzie Buehler, the translator of Yun Ko-eun's CWA Dagger-winning "The Disaster Tourist" and her short story collection "Table for One," as well as Seo Su-jin's "Korean Teachers" / Courtesy of Lizzie Buehler

"There's a lot of extra unpaid labor that translators end up doing. You kind of have to be a translator and an agent in some ways," Buehler said.

The whole pitching process can be tricky, especially for Korean literary translators who, most of the time, must interact with editors and publishing houses that are unable to speak or read the source language.

If the books are penned by authors who have never been translated into English before ― which was the case for Chung's "Cursed Bunny" and Yun's "Table for One" ― how can the editors determine whether they are going to be publishable?

"The only people that they can believe are other foreign agents, who also do not know how to read Korean for the most part, or translators like me. So we are going around doing the work that agents normally do and getting these deals for," Hur said. "There's so much legwork and paperwork that goes into doing this job."

Among all Korean literary pieces, Hur's focus lies especially on bringing attention to the authors and narratives that are situated on the fringes of the literary establishment here.

"There is this mechanism, whether conscious or not, of marginalization in Korea, in terms of the publishers, funding bodies and academia," he said. "So it was my mission to break down those institutions and to celebrate the literature that we love."

He realized that there frequently lies a discrepancy between the local institutions' ideas of what kind of Korean literature should be translated ― still focused on giving platforms primarily to middle-aged heterosexual men ― and what people outside of Korea actually want to read.

The works he's drawn to include dynamic women-centric narratives, science and speculative fiction, as well as queer literature.

"Cursed Bunny" and "Love in the Big City" are the latest examples that speak for his commitment to bring these marginalized elements into the spotlight.

"Cursed Bunny" can be best described as a gripping amalgamation of absurdist tales that draw on science fiction, horror and fantasy. The inexplicably bizarre elements featured in the story of malediction and revenge remind readers of the very real horrors of patriarchy and capitalism that exist in this world.

Meanwhile, "Love in the Big City" is a frank depiction of Korea's contemporary queer scene as it follows a young gay man's journey of self-awareness and struggle in his love life.

Hur's consciously political choice to celebrate such works outside of Korea's literary establishment is more significant considering that he is one of only three full-time, Seoul-based translators tasked with bringing Korean literature to the English-speaking world.

In fact, the current size of the market for Korean texts in the Anglosphere can only sustain such a small number of translators, he explained.

"They already have a big internal market with so many English books being published every year that they don't necessarily need literature from other countries," he said, adding that only 3 percent to 5 percent of all books released in the United States and the U.K. are works in translation. "And of all the translated books, only around 1 percent is Korean. So the market is very, very small."

Buehler similarly noted that the English-speaking literary world can be "inward-looking," in that people are not forced to go out of their comfort zone actively to seek out books and writers outside of the Anglophone market.

This makes it a "miracle," as Hur puts it, every time a Korean book gets published in English, let alone get included in the longlist for the International Booker Prize.

But at the same time, the two translators acknowledged that there has been a shift in the mainstream recognition of translated Korean literature within the English market to a certain degree, notably over the last five years.

"I don't think that English readers are as scared or suspicious of translated literature as they used to be," Buehler said.

Up until recently, translating books, especially those originally written in "non-Western" languages like Korean, was seen more as an academic pursuit, she added. This image then contributed to the stereotype that such texts might be more challenging to read and less approachable for the average audience.

"But I think the translations that are coming out now are oftentimes a bit more mainstream in terms of their plot and their appeal to general readers. And the translators themselves come from more of a creative writing background rather than just (from) academic (backgrounds)," she said.

As a result, some Korean literary translators like Buehler choose to meet readers at their levels and use the translated texts to immerse them in the story, instead of taking a more academic approach that might run the risk of seeming less compelling for foreign language readers, in order to have the text stay truer to "the original."

As the English-language readership of Korean literature continues to grow, albeit moderately, Hur urges the Korean rights holders and publishers to have more faith in translators when it comes to dealing with acquisitions for literary works.

A number of publishers still remain distrustful, even to the point of hostility, he said, despite the translators' role in increasing the global visibility of Korean literature and in some cases, helping the books hit the local bestseller list again when they are named winners of prestigious awards.

"I'd like them to stop doing that, because in the end, we all have the same goal: we all want Korean literature to succeed and flourish."