hankyoreh

Deborah Smith

After English translator Deborah Smith won the Man Booker International Prize along with Han Kang for her English-language translation of Han’s novel “The Vegetarian,” she came to South Korea for the Seoul International Book Fair. On June 15, Smith held a press conference at the international hall of the COEX exhibition center in Seoul, where the book fair was taking place.

After arriving a little behind schedule at the press conference, which was packed with around 100 reporters, Smith started the by reading a greeting that she had written on her mobile phone, unsurprisingly for a young translator.

“‘The Vegetarian’ is a novel that is at once gentle and terrifying. The first time I read it, it made an unbelievable impression on me. It engaged me on various levels, including the quality of the writing, the evocative imagery, and the tone and the mood that it set. I thought that the novel’s division into three stories would be refreshing to British readers. The writing style is disciplined, controlled, and perfectly balanced despite the appearance of three separate narrators, and as a translator I focused on how to convey that writing style in English,” Smith said.

“It‘s gratifying to win this prize and to be acknowledged for my work on this translation, but I think that I got lucky. I try to bear in mind what [Korean to English translator] Brother Anthony said, that translation is a humble task that should not involve self-promotion. I think that winning the Man Booker International Prize was the result of a collaborative effort with the writer Han Kang, the agent and the editor. I am grateful to past translators who have made us aware that translation of a work of literature is rewriting it creatively in another language.”

Smith undertook her prize-winning translation of “The Vegetarian” just three years after beginning to learn the Korean language in 2010.

“The appeal of translation is that as a writer you don’t have to come up with a story, characters or background. Another advantage of translation is that you don‘t have to struggle with writer’s block as writers sometimes do,” said Smith, who majored in English literature at Cambridge University before majoring in Korean literature in graduate school.

In addition to “The Vegetarian,” Smith has published translations of “Human Acts,” another novel by Han Kang, and “The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher,” by Ahn Do-hyun. She has also finished translating two novels by Bae Su-ah called “The Essayist’s Desk” and “The Low Hills of Seoul,” which will be published in the US in Oct. 2016 and Jan. 2017, respectively.

Yet another novel by Bae, called “The Owl’s Absence,” is scheduled to be published in the US in early 2018, while Han Kang’s latest novel, “The Elegy of Whiteness,” is supposed to be published in the UK next year.

“Tilted Axis Press, the publishing company that I set up to specialize in Asian literature, has partnered with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea to publish at least one translation of Korean literature a year. We’re supposed to publish a novel by Hwang Jung-eun this October, and we’ve already finalized a contract for another work by Hwang Jung-eun. Next year, we’re going to release a novel by Han Yu-ju,” Smith said.

“Bae Su-ah’s fiction is very unusual and is overflowing with originality. That makes it all the harder to translate, but I enjoy that kind of challenge. I’m interested in works of literature with an intriguing writing style. I prefer writing that doesn’t just convey information but offers something else. During my visit to Korea, I’m planning to meet Korean publishers to discuss translating and publishing other works and authors.”

Smith acknowledged that the hard work of organizations like the Literature Translation Institute of Korea was helping Korean literature go global, but she expressed her consternation with South Koreans‘ obsession with winning the Nobel Prize.

“Prizes are just prizes. Writers writing great books and readers appreciating them is enough of a reward in itself, I think,” Smith said.

By Choi Jae-bong, literature correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]