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| Fiction Grand Prize winner Graham Hand |
He developed an interest in translation as he studied Korean, and began translating Korean literature about 10 years ago, starting with short poems. He made his first submission to The Korea Times' Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards with a fictional story five years ago.
This time, Hand translated writer Kim Ae-ran's short story, "The Beginning of Winter," for the contest.
"Everything Kim Ae-ran writes is phenomenal; I think 'The Beginning of Winter' is particularly significant," he said.
He said that translating this novel was challenging because the writer's use of words and descriptions needed meticulous work to deliver her intentions precisely.
"The story includes some meta-linguistic challenges, with specific descriptions of Korean reading and writing that need to be made coherent to an audience that may be unfamiliar with Korean script," he said.
"Kim Ae-ran is exceptionally careful about exactly what she says and doesn't say and when, and for the story to work as a narrative it requires precision with exactly how and when information is parceled out or implied. And, of course, the crystalline textural beauty of her use of the Korean language leaves a translator with some sense of loss, but one does what one can."
Adding that translation brings up fundamental questions about why people read novels as well as the reasons people read translated novels over works in their native language, Hand explained his own meaning of good translation. He compared literature translation to mechanical engineering.
"I think translation is essentially a branch of mechanical engineering, in that the object is to look at a machine that performs a task and then build a new machine, using new parts, which performs the same task in the same way. But that leaves the question of what task literature performs open," he said.
