There is a truly great article in the New York Times about the role of the translator and translation (in several, some surprising, guises). Michael Cunningham the author of “The Hours” and, most recently, “By Nightfall” uses his experience and a graceful examination of the translation of one line(!) from Moby Dick to illuminate some…
A really interesting essay over on the New York Times website, titled “Midnight’s Other Children.” (sometimes this link requires registration, sometimes it does not). Th It talks about the differences between Granta’s “rollout” of Indian translated literature and now Pakistani translated literature. The article makes several points, but among the most important is the difference…
Over at Global Voices in English, Lee Yoo Eun talks about the problems of translating from English to Korean. Some interesting problems are: The space limitations – no more than 16 words per screen How to deal with honorifics needed in Korean but not used in English, and Most amusingly, blowback from Netizens who are…
About three weeks ago Dongguk gave me a remarkable opportunity – I will be teaching a new class in reading translated Korean literature. The opportunity is remarkable in that I get to write a brand new class, but also remarkable in that I have to write it by September 1st (and with a vacation in…
Amazon.com Inc. plans to create a publishing house, called AmazonCrossing, that will translate foreign books into English. Amazon will acquire the rights to foreign books and have them translated in-house. These books will be printed and sold through traditional channels; national and independent booksellers as well as third party wholesalers, but they will also be available through the Kindle e-bookstore, which opens up an entirely new market.
Being one of the luckiest men in Seoul, I am reading an advance copy of Kim Young-ha’s “Your Republic is Calling You.” I’m about 100 pages in and it is already brilliant (this is the time I get scared that the author will lose steam, or has a cruddy ending in mind. Oh well). It…
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How can Korea retool its translation process in order to bring more overseas success?
How to Succeed Korea’s Translation Successes
In an interview in TimeOut Shangai Kim Hye-jin says some interesting things about possible changes/improvement through translation.