Fiction Commendation Award winner Sunnie Chae

Sunnie Chae is a Korean American translator, who is currently working as a lecturer at Ewha Womans University.

After earning her graduate degree in English literature, she started out working in media localization. Although she has never gone through formal training for Korean-English translation, she became familiar with the work through jobs at different places, including a post-production company, a publisher and a content platform.

Chae has worked in translation for almost a decade. “I've now reached a point where I can translate what I love — namely literature and film,” she said.

She translated novelist Park Seon-woo's "We in the Same Place” for the 54th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards contest.

Park's story spoke to Chae especially during the pandemic.

“I came across Park Seon-woo's 'We in the Same Place' in 2020. I read it on my subway rides to and from work, savoring every word,” she said. “The pandemic had left me feeling detached from everything, including myself, and Park's stories about finding connection struck a chord.”

As the novel resonated with her, she was afraid that she may not be able to capture the full essence of the original work in her translation.

“I worried that my translation wouldn't do justice to the richly evocative original. I had to battle that fear and trust that the author's artistry would survive in English,” she said.

When asked what she thinks a good translation is, she answered: “A good translation is a joy to read.”