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| From top left clockwise, Brother Anthony, Min Eun-kyung, and Jung Ha-yun, the judges of The Korea Times Translation Awards |
By Brother Anthony, Jung Ha-yun and Min Eun-kyung
The work of a literary translator begins with reading, doing an up-close examination of the original text. Through this process, the translator hopes to understand not only the words and the sentences that make up the work but also its literary significance ― both thematic and aesthetic.
This is why translators are often expected to play the role of curator or spokesperson in the world literature scene, and why publishers often rely on the translator to choose and recommend works from an unfamiliar culture.
As judges for the Korea Times Modern Literature Translation Awards, we look forward each year to discovering exciting new talents and also to being introduced to authors and works that we might have otherwise overlooked.
This year's entries included original works by a diverse range of writers, from widely recognized names like Kim Won-il, Kim Ae-ran and Lee Hae-in to new voices like Park Jun and Im Sol-ah.
While we were impressed by the range of authors chosen for translation this year, we also found it more difficult to review the translation entries. The more impressive stories and poems were not the best translated, while the more fluent and polished translations did not quite impress because the original works did not represent the most accomplished and challenging works by their respective authors.
After much deliberation, we decided on the two following translations as finalists in the fiction category: "The Tall Dwarf" by Park Hyoung-su and "Half of His Egg Muffin" by Kim Keum-hee. Park's short story is an allegory about discrimination and social identity ― one that relies on his trademark deadpan humor and satirical tone but lacks the richness of his earlier work.
The translation reads very well and the translator's control of tone and voice are impressive, but we did not feel that Park's simple, plain prose had presented the translator with significant enough challenges. Kim's "Half of His Egg Muffin," published as part of a collection of "short shorts," is a minor work among her fiction, not only in terms of length but also in its overall narrative weight.
The translation expertly handles Kim's descriptive language to weave together the mini-tale that takes place on an urban block in Sinchon. However, in comparison with Park's story, the manuscript simply felt lightweight. In the end, we decided to award "The Tall Dwarf" with the Grand Prize in fiction, which this year will also be honored with a recognition from the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The Commendation Prize in fiction goes to "Half of His Egg Muffin."
In poetry, we had very few entries that made convincing attempts to translate poetry into poetry; most manuscripts settled for prosaic renditions of the original verse. We were left with one finalist that deserved a close look: 10 translated poems from Yu Hyoung-jin's 2005 collection, "The Assassination of Peter Rabbit."
Yu's poetry can be characterized as witty and post-modern but the majority of the selected works are prose poems, which lowered the bar for the translator. And again we were left wondering about the translator's selection. The original poems aim at creating an interesting textural effect by juxtaposing quotidian Korean voices with Western cultural references.
Our questions were: can this effect be appreciated in English? Has the translator made a good curatorial choice? Although the judges did not feel that the translator had chosen the best poems by Yu Hyoung-jin to translate, we decided that the lively and confident translation nonetheless deserved the Grand Prize in poetry. We trust that the translator will not stop with these translations but push on to newer and harder challenges.
In fact, one of the most important challenges facing the translator is choosing the right work to translate. We hope that the experience of entering this contest offers beginning translators a chance to ponder the importance of this challenge. We encourage this year's ― and future ― applicants to keep reading and to keep searching.
Our congratulations go to the Grand Prize and Commendation Award winners. We also wish to acknowledge all the translators who submitted their work and would like to encourage them to keep working on their craft.
We are especially grateful to all our applicants for the dedication they have shown despite the many difficulties that we face during this pandemic. We look forward to continuing this important tradition of welcoming new talent into a global community of translators, who are first and foremost the most avid readers of literature.
