In the Korea Times, more Korean discussion about the need to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. Once again the focus is a bit off to me.. One of the women featured says:

“Jessica and I have always talked about the lack of English translations of Korean literature and movies. Although there are many good works, when they are translated in English there are mistranslations and even grammar mistakes. We felt this was so unfortunate,” Han said.

And the general point might be accurate – to say that there is not enough translation over all, but then to jump to the many good works which are mistranslated or have grammatical mistakes (and of course they exist, I recently went ballistic reading a God-awful translation of Aunt Suni), is to ignore that many of the works that are translated are “good” to Koreans, but have little impact in the West because their topics are not appropriate. Just one example has been the fairly relentless tendency of Korea to translate its ‘literature of national division’ (pundan munhak or 분단 문학 if my Hangul isn’t too cruddy) which has very little relevance to the West and is bleak in a non-existential way, and thus not very attractive to potential readers or voters.

If that sort of problem is not addressed, no amount of technically perfect translation is going to help Korea win its first Nobel for Literature.

And, to be fair, in other spots, the women’s analysis was exactly correct, such as:

I think the Korean government should support the translation of Korean literature. People from other countries know a lot about Japanese literature, because there are lots of translated Japanese works in other countries. This makes people interested in Japanese culture too,” said Han.

The link between Japanese literature hitting the US in 1970 and the cultural wave that followed shortly thereafter is pretty clear, and with Korean food about to take off, and its products already ubiquitous, it is time for the literature to get in position to do its part in globalizing Korean culture. Also, in this case, it seems that the work that the translators have been doing is spreading the thematic range of translated work, which is something that can’t happen fast enough.

Having said that, however, and given Han’s first complaint that there aren’t enough works translated I have some trouble understanding her last claim that,

There are so many great works by Korean writers that the world should see. Also, I think that the best way of creating serious interest in Korean literature and culture would be to have a multitude of translations for each piece. Often you see just one ‘definitive’ translation of one work. Translation is an interpretative art and we need more than just one perspective,” she said.

Surely, in a world in which there currently aren’t enough translations in general, it is unwise to multiply translate works that have already been published?