| Poetry Grand Prize winner Joanne Park |
Park got into translating literature when she took a two-year program at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI Korea) Translation Academy, and has since translated a variety of literary works of fiction as well as poetry. She received the LTI Korea Translation Award for Aspiring Translators last month for her translation of an unknown author's short story called “Gangdo-mongyurok”.
“I've been translating literature for 3 years now. I believe the urge was always there. I've 'straddled two worlds' almost all my life without ever belonging to either of them. It can be difficult, rewarding and often lonely to reside in that grey zone. I've always felt the need ― at times practical, intellectual, or existential ― to bridge the two worlds, and that's really what translation is. It operates on a love for both languages, and its fuel is the need to communicate,” Park said.
She picked a selection of poems from “The Assassination of Peter Rabbit” by Yu Hyoung-jin to enter the competition for this award.
Describing Yu's poems fun to read, Park said, “I remember reading Yu's 'Mermaid Restaurant' for the first time ― I'd had a really persistent craving for sliced raw fish, and reading the poem put me off fish for the longest time. This is very powerful, I thought. I love the way she draws from fairy tales and children's stories to talk about deeper, darker themes like desire, loss, capitalism, and how it desensitizes people to violence and inhumanity.”
She said the toughest thing about translating Yu's poems was conveying the tone and mood of the original work.
“The Korean language has diverse verb endings that can convey not only who's talking at the moment, but also subtle variations in the tone and mood, and even clues about the speaker's personality. English works differently, however, so it was a challenge to produce the same effect in the translation,” she said.
Park used to think that readability was the “be-all and end-all” of translation, but she recently realized that there is always a political dimension to translation.
“Some things just can't be compromised for the sake of readability. For instance, I'd never use 'sake' when the original is 'makgeolli.' The world I've experienced so far is a largely Anglophone, US-centric and sadly xenophobic one. Translation may not be strong or influential enough to balance the scales, but I hope it could be the brave little egg that strikes the boulder,” she said.