Kim Chi-young: Words on Translation

Kim Chi-young

(Image from JoongAng Daily)

Shin Kyung-sook's recently translated novel, Please Look After Mom, is doing well on Amazon's bestseller list, ranking 10th among works of literature as of April 10th this year, according to Shin Joon-bong and Yu I-na of the JoongAng Daily in their "Interview" (April 13, 2011) with the novel's translator, Kim Chi-young. This unexpected popularity has generated quite a stir on the Korean literary scene, and a lot is being written on the possibility that now might be Korean literature's breakthrough moment, the cusp of time when foreign readers become aware of how good Korean literature is:

"The American response to this book is unprecedented in Korean literature history." said Jang Eun-su, president of Korean publisher Mineumsa. "Since 2000, more and more Americans have become interested in Asian literature, so the intense interest in Shin's book is perhaps a result of current trends in the American publishing market."

Well, I hope so, since my wife and I form a translating team, and any greater market in the English-speaking world can only be to our benefit, but I think that I ought to point out that the crucial reason for the breakthrough of Please Look After Mom is that Oprah Winfrey has promoted it.

This isn't to say that the novel doesn't deserve its success. Shin Kyung-sook is a good writer, and my wife says that the Korean original is excellent. I also know from serving as a literary judge for the Daesan Foundation that Kim Chi-young is an excellent translator. I haven't read Please Look After Mom, but I'm sure that this translation is also excellent and deserves its success.

But Oprah's the key.

I'm not here today to talk about that, however. Rather, I merely want to focus on a few points that Kim Chi-young makes about translating:

Do you have your own principles for translating?

My principle is that translated books should give readers almost the same feelings as the original ones. Readers are not scholars. They are not patient [enough to read through awkward expressions]. I cut out dialects and polite expressions from original texts. If I translate South Jeolla dialect into an American Southern accent, readers would find the translation awkward.

Do you break sentences apart?

Of course I do. I don't translate sentences word for word. In order to maintain American-style English, I often split Korean sentences into several English ones or combine several sentences to make one English sentence.

If a Korean sentence feels poetic, the translated one should feel poetic as well. If I did a word-for-word translation, my translation would be considered stilted.

My wife and I had to learn some of these lessons on the job. I remember working on Jeong Ji A's short story "Light of Spring" and trying to catch the dialect by using a rural American accent, but that didn't work at all, as I've previously noted. It was, as Kim Chi-young says, "awkward."

As for conveying the same feeling in the translation as in the original text, that's something that only a truly bilingual translator can judge for certain. My wife and I strive for the same sense as the original Korean, but expressed in English in a natural way, hopefully also of literary quality.

So of course, we also split sentences. Or combine sentences. Or even paragraphs, splitting and combining. We sometimes go so far as to rearrange a sequence of sentences for a more natural progression in English. Or add necessary information. And we certainly excise those maddening Korean ellipses, where a speaker 'says' something by saying nothing:

". . . ."

That just doesn't work in English as a stand-alone 'remark' in dialogue. It has to be rendered as something like:

She said nothing.

Or simply deleted, with the other speaker continuing to talk . . . or the like.

One of the most difficult decisions is how to handle an inconsistency. The difficulty depends on how much would need to be altered in the text to rectify the problem. Sometimes, it's easy, just a typo -- say, a slip-up, one character's name typed slipshod when a different character was undoubtedly meant. But sometimes, there's more to be done. Recently, in our work translating Yi Gwang-su's novel The Soil, one chapter was so wrong in its reference to previous events that my wife and I have advised cutting it entirely from the translation if the Korea Literature Translation Institute (KLTI) happens to find a publisher (assuming that the KLTI even accepts our translation).

Anyway, I'm pleased that Kim Chi-young is getting all this attention and that she's spoken out on the necessity of translating 'freely,' for some Korean literary referees still remain highly conservative and object to translations that are not word-for-word translations.

Kim Chi-young, by the way, is the daughter of Yu Young-nan, another excellent translator of Korean literature, and a person whom I've met . . .

Recognizing Kim Seong-Kon at the Daesan Literary Awards Ceremony

Daesan Literary Awards Logo

(Image from Daesan Foundation)

Though I didn't recognize the author Ch'oe Yun at last Friday's Daesan Literary Awards ceremony, I did happen to recognize someone else whom I'd also never met before. I had just arrived at the 20th floor of the Seoul Press Club building and greeted the translator Brother Anthony, whom I've known for years now.

To be precise, I've known Brother Anthony ever since my days at Hanshin University way back in 2001, when I first learned of his Sogang University website and contacted him by email about something or other having to do with English literature. I think that I was asking his advice about how to establish myself as a literary scholar in Korea since my background was history and religious studies. I can't say that I've been especially successful, academically, but I have managed to publish regularly as a scholar and critic . . . which might or might not be relevant to this anecdote.

At any rate, I greeted Brother Anthony, who told me that he couldn't stay for the ceremony due to the scheduled weekly prayers required by his Taize monastic community. He had decided to make a brief early appearance at the celebration because he had also served as a literary judge on the same board as I. Anyway, as we were speaking, Brother Anthony stopped a Korean man who was passing by and started to introduce us. I didn't catch the man's name, but he looked so familiar that I was certain that I had seen him before. As we shook hands, I said:

"You look very familiar. Perhaps we've met at a conference?"

I looked more closely as his face came into focus for me, and I knew who he was.

"Oh, now, I recognize you from your photo. You write for the newspaper! I read your weekly column."

The man looked briefly puzzled, then realized what I was talking about.

"Ah, the Korea Herald."

"Right," I agreed. "I really enjoy your column."

We then parted, and I was feeling good about having recognized the man's face since I'm often very poor at placing people's names and faces. In fact, I once failed to recognize the president of Korea University when he greeted me in the hallway outside my Korea University office even though he had personally interviewed me only weeks before when I had applied for my position there. That was one of my most embarrassing moments. In my defense, I should note that I had been up since 3:00 a.m. that morning, grading student essays.

I was thus feeling good -- as I said -- about recognizing the columnist's face. I recalled, also, that he was a professor at Seoul National University. I could not, however, dredge up his name, but a few minutes later, as I sat down at my table, he showed up again and handed me his card.

"Kim Seong-Kon," I read aloud, then rummaged around in my bag for my own cards and handed him one.

He looked at it carefully, then exclaimed, "Ah, the famous Dr. Hodges!"

I laughed, assuming that he was joking, and we parted again. But I then wondered if he had been joking. I had probably better hope so, for if I'm 'famous', then my fame is likely to be of the infamous sort since I've done nothing here in Korea to gain any positive fame.

But rather than go into the details of my infamy, I'd better just leave things at that . . .