Lachlan Bowden -- 02/04 Readings Response

 Articles on Han Kang Controversy

I found that reading all three articles together formed a really interesting conversation about a translator’s fidelity to, and interpretation of, the source text. Tim Parks’ criticism of Smith’s inaccurate translation raised a lot of questions about the distance in which a translator may wander from the original, what liberties are afforded in the name of an English language reception and understanding. I found myself thinking about the statement: “in a literary text a certain content manifests itself in a certain style. There is no separating the two. The difficulty with translation is always to reconstruct that relationship.” Interpreting this, Parks’ is stating what makes a literary text unique and precious is its union of content through specific style and/or voice. Naturally, the act of translation inherently warps both style and content to some degree. He then continues to note Smith’s tendency to opt for idiomatic, ornate, or plain incorrect phrasing. I found these arguments to be rather compelling. And further, after reading Charse Yun’s article, I found myself questioning the authority a translator should be allowed to assume and still call their work, as Yun puts it, a translation and not an adaptation. However, after reading Deborah Smith’s piece, I found myself conflicted and with even more uncertainty. Considering that Smith was the one deeply involved in the text as well as being in dialogue with Kang, I found her justifications held more bearing than the critics. I especially found this statement compelling: “translating from Korean into English involves moving from a language more accommodating of ambiguity, repetition, and plain prose, to one that favors precision, concision, and lyricism.” And that in order to communicate this sense of ambiguity a more poetic and lyrical interpretation was required to capture the essence of the voice. Whether this concession was warranted, I am not sure.

Deborah Smith’s Infidelity 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Sun Kyoung Yoon’s piece. Having not read The Vegetarian, Yoon’s mapping of thematic and contextual relevance through the lens of feminist theory put the translation into a new light. It seems to me that Smith was reaching for the core of the novel, and allowed hefty omissions and additions to bring this to a global audience. While this aligns with the theoretical approach of a translation—to communicate the intention and emotional relevance of a text—I found myself unsure about the omissions part. While Kang’s blessing of these alterations must be considered, I wonder what the reception would have been like if the entirety of the book was included. Possibly, the social commentary and feminist application may not have been as clear? But is it not cheapening to have the source text diluted for an English language reception? I am not entirely sure, and look forward to discussing it in class. Regardless, Yoon’s article had many strong points, specifically that “literary translation should not be literal, but literary” (940). And it is clear that Smith’s translation was effective in its accolades and success. 

Translators’ Prefaces to tr. of Petrarch

When thinking about capturing the essence of a text rather than a literal translation of it, David R. Slavitt’s comment on the requirement of repetition in Petrarch’s poetry is an example of the need to understand the key function of a piece’s success. His statement, “to convey at least some suggestion of this in English, I think rhyme is necessary in translating them, even if the rhymes require some slight departure from the literal meaning of some of the sentences”, confirms this. In light of the previous two readings, “some slight departure” begets the question of what this distance actually can be. It is clear that Slavitt’s intention is to understand what the source piece best achieved, regardless of personal involvement or preference, and to convey this through English. So, when translator preference or opinion is involved, how much should the reader be able to see? 

I appreciated how Mark Musa’s translation note addressed the specifics of approach in conjunctions, indentation, and punctuation conventions. It was interesting to read the thought process of moving into a modernised structure for ease of audience reception. Moreover, his closing paragraph includes the admission that “nothing is as good as the original”, and that if the reader should seek the original after reading the translation, then some form of success on his part has been achieved. Again, this championing of the source text is fascinating. 

What became clear after reading David Young’s notes was that often a translator will select a specific, defining aspect of the original to try and retain. Young wanted to avoid "modernizing" Petrarch excessively, while still capturing the formality, drama, and energy of the original. Reflecting on Smith’s translation of The Vegetarian, it is clear that she had a similar intention of capturing the energy and essence of Kang’s work. However, how much can the translator make their presence known? How aware should the reader be that the translator has added their perspective?

LM 2/4

  

When reading all the essays about Deborah Smith’s translation of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, I thought of Don Lee’s short story “The Partition” (also the title story of his collection). I read the short story a few years ago, but I think of it often. In the story, the main character is facing career consequences due to a translation controversy like Smith’s. I was delighted to find that the connection I made had basis, as discussed in this interview: https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/the-dirty-secret-of-rodgers-forge-and-other-inspirations-don-lee-talks-about-his-new-story-collection/

I thought Yun’s comparison: “imagine the plain, contemporary style of Raymond Carver being garnished with the elaborate diction of Charles Dickens” was helpful, conceptually with understanding the conflict and the question posed: “If the translation modified the original this much, can Korean literature even claim any of the glory?” was an interesting one to ponder. Parks’ “Raw and Cooked” further complicated my understanding of the issue in bringing in the relationship between content and style and the challenges in reconstructing that relationship. In Smith’s article, she points out the unique challenges of translation as an art form: “It’s… perhaps the only art that can be not just bad, but wrong, and will never not be flawed.” I thought her reflections on the feminization of the profession were especially profound (and relatable, coming from social work). In Yoon’s article, I was struck by the assertion that Smith’s translation “resists the oppressive patriarchal logic at the heart of translation’s myth of fidelity like the radical politics of the heroine’s vegetarianism.” With all this in mind, it can be overwhelming to approach translation, but there is something freeing about Smith’s assertion that any translation (maybe like anything at all?) will always be flawed.

I found the Petrarch prefaces an abrupt shift from so many articles about The Vegetarian, but I love David Young’s reflection on his “friendship” with Petrarch. I love thinking of translation as a relational art, and it's a useful framework for approaching a fairly overwhelming task.

Leah Smolin - Responses for 2.4

I enjoyed Tim Parks’ review of “The Vegetarian”—I appreciate a review that comes from a place of “is no one else seeing what I’m seeing?” I agreed that the phrases he picked out sound like “novelese” and the end of this sentence grammatically goes off the rails: “Taking in her nicely filled-out figure, big, double-lidded eyes, and demure manner of speaking, I sorely regretted the many things it seemed I’d ended up losing somehow or other, to have left me in my current plight.” Parks’ and Charse Yun’s criticism of Deborah Smith’s choice to “poeticize” the novel was interesting. On one hand, I’d like a translation to prioritize being beautiful/interesting in the target language over fidelity. (As a reader, I would have appreciated Jeffrey Angles improving the prose in the Mothra novelization.) On the other hand, it does seem like translation “promises” the reader that the style of the original remains intact.

In the LARB, Smith says, “Translating from Korean into English involves moving from a language more accommodating of ambiguity, repetition, and plain prose, to one that favors precision, concision, and lyricism.” I’m not sure I understand this. Isn’t “plain prose” necessarily precise and concise? And who says English can’t favor plain prose? I think Smith herself just doesn’t favor it, and that’s fine. It’s strange that she doesn’t just admit to taking liberties and stand by it.

Is translation an act of feminine procreation or is it masculine violence and rape of an original language? You can make these kinds of abstract arguments in either direction and I don't find them particularly useful. In Sun Kyoung Yoon’s article, I’m struck by the metaphors introduced about gender and feminism. Yoon is right to criticize the idea of original works as somehow male. But as far as the original being superior, isn’t it widely accepted that the original work is superior, that something is “lost” in translation and if you can, you should read books in their original language? I wouldn’t call this opinion patriarchal, just potentially snobbish. Unless Smith got Han Kang’s permission, I think changing characters’ motivations in the way Yoon describes is in fact a betrayal of the original text, not a feminist “subversion of the patriarchal myth of fidelity.” 

David R. Slavitt’s introduction to Petrarch is informative, history-focused, and interesting while still feeling personal. I like the hot take “Petrarch has been of greater influence on English literature than Dante.” 

Mark Musa’s introduction has a lot of undefined terminology relating to Latin and assumes familiarity with the original text (or other translations). I could’ve used a bit more explanation. I also find his wording around choosing to maintain rhythm and meter but not rhyme to be evasive/unconvincing. There are plenty of good reasons to make that choice, but he doesn’t explain his. 

I’m immediately charmed by David Young’s introduction from the first sentence: “Translating is a most peculiar activity.” And here’s a much better reasoning for keeping meter but discarding rhyme! This one is very methodology-focused. An example sonnet, with other translations! I love this introduction!

Ellie Wells post February 4th

 I have to disagree with Sun Kyoung Yoon's analysis of feminism and translation. While I understand the idea that expecting a work to maintain fidelity is similar to expecting a woman to maintain fidelity to a man, I do not think that this applies in the case that the original author already wrote a feminist work, and is a feminist woman herself. Fidelity to a source text is not a means of control, but a means of honoring that source text and its original tone and content. In fact I think it is somewhat arrogant to take liberties with the translation and go off script when translating, because that takes away fro the original intent and the message that the author is trying to get across, as if saying "I know how to convey these ideas better than the author who originally proposed them." If we are not careful, we risk projecting our own beliefs onto a story that did not have them in the first place, because we are taking liberties that are not ours to take. 

This being said, I have read The Vegetarian, and in fact I wrote my thesis on this novel last semester. I read the work in translation, and I quite liked it, and I enjoyed the feminist perspective that the novel provided. I had previously heard of these critiques of the translation, but for my paper, I was not focusing on those points. I think that, while the translation was good, and I appreciated the aspects of feminism included, it does not excuse the translator from taking liberties, and including things that should not have been there. Like one of the articles mentioned, the main character's sister expressed some anti-feminist rhetoric that the translator left out of her translation. While this decision made way for the sisters to have a more meaningful and supportive relationship, this changes the direction of the source text, and in fact changes some of the arguments I made in my paper about this work. Changing a source text changes the outcome, changes the way people perceive the work and the conclusions they form about it. I agree, that a direct one for one translation from Korean to English would not work, and in fact would lend itself to an almost illegible story. However, there is a very major difference between making something palatable and enjoyable in a translation, and taking extreme amounts of creative liberty. There are ways that Korean translations into English can be both faithful to the source text and enjoyable and engaging in English. 

I also agree with the articles that stated the tone was a little variable at times, with some things standing out as odd, or ringing the wrong way when reading. While I liked the translation and the novel itself, I do think it does a disservice to readers (and certainly did a disservice to one of the points in my thesis) to stray so far from the source material.

I appreciated Deborah's own thoughts on the matter, and I agree with her, that translation is not just mastery of a language, but a continual learning process, and I can sympathize with the fact that this was her first translation, and she was not well developed in her Korean skills yet. However, I would say to that point that perhaps she should have started smaller, or waited until she was further along to attempt such a large and thematically bold work. I would have suggested she start with small essays or short stories, to get a feel for how to translate first, as I have experienced first hand. I appreciate that she accepts her criticism and is both proud, and yet humble, about her work. I think this is a good attitude to have when translating, and this was probably a great learning experience for her. 

In addition, Han Kang's own opinion about the work is not to be taken lightly, and if she likes the translation, then that is what really matters, even if the translator took many liberties. Critics talking over Han Kang's own voice turns them into exactly what they critiqued Smith of being: arrogant. 

Ultimately, this argument is very nuanced, and I think there are positives and negatives of taking liberties when translating a work, especially one with such important, heavy, and relevant themes. The work impacted me in translation, and I liked evaluating it and discussing the nuances of the feminism present in the work within my thesis. However, the changes Smith made did ultimately change some of the characters and ideas within the work, and so one cannot be sure that the translation accurately represents all the points Han originally intended for her Korean novel. 

A New Translation Paradigm? - Cheryl

The discourse around the issue of translator credentials with Deborah Smith and her translation of Han Kang's "The Vegetarian" reminded me of the uproar around Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier's selection as the translators of Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex," given their limited experience as literary translators and their main experience being in language instruction. Here critics pointed out that Deborah Smith had only been learning Korean for 6 years, and this might've been relevant to the "beginner" mistakes she made in her translation, but it begs the question, how long would ever be long enough? Is there a magic number of years after which your authority as a translator may not be questioned? (We all know that even the most experienced translators make mistakes.)

The idea of "fidelity" in translation has always been one that is so fraught, and ever so hard to pin down. On the sliding scale of "fidelity" what is the threshold for acceptability and how could it ever be measured? Both the New York Review of Books and the Los Angeles Times review point out that most anglophone readers will never know how much Smith had deviated from the original and that ultimately, it is her version that they relished, even as some might feel betrayed if they ever realised that the translation might not have been as close a reflection of the original as they were led to believe.

Sun Kyoung Yoon argues that Smith's translation is an act of creative and political writing and that it should be viewed as such. I personally like the idea of expanding the definition of what translation can be to give translators more creative license and in some cases, a political voice, but I think the crux of the matter is marketing and public reception. The average reader expects and assumes that in reading a translated text, they are sharing in the experience of the original audience and that this is possible in a complete and uncompromising way. I think this is why when a translated text is revealed to be "unfaithful" in any way, readers feel betrayed because this is not what they feel they were promised. 

In the three prefaces by David R. Slavitt, Mark Musa and David Young, each defends their own "infidelity" in translation:

To convey at least some suggestion of this in English, I think rhyme is necessary in translating them, even if the rhymes require some slight departure from the literal meaning of some of the sentences. I have taken further liberties, necessary because English is rhyme poor compared to Italian. - Slavitt

I have tried to be faithful to the poem's meaning without being too literal, and faithful to its sound and music without being archaic or restricting myself to a formal rhyme scheme. - Musa

My "liberties," where they occur, come from the constraints of meter and the desire to be clear and straightforward. - Young

To me, this suggests that the importance of faithfulness runs deep in translation theory and convention, even in forms as elusive and fluid as poetry. 

I'm interested to see how paradigms in translation might be stretched and shifted, but I can see that translation as a purely creative act might be some time away. 

2.4 Readings Yide Cai

 I appreciate the range of perspectives in this week’s readings from the defense of the translator herself, to the critiques, to the more distanced academic analyses. What strikes me most, overall, is the irony surrounding the entire debate. South Korea today is, for me, by many measures, wealthier, more technologically advanced, and more globally influential than the UK. And yet the discussion is still framed through the lens of imperialism, as if Britain remains the center of cultural authority. Part of this, of course, is because English remains the dominant global language. But it is also tied to the way South Koreans themselves often continue to believe that Western validation and Western prizes matter more than their own literary ecosystems. Even within the academy, South Korean scholars appear to remain beholden to translation standards that originated in the West. What results is a kind of echo chamber, or a distorted mirror, where the “discovery” of something foreign feels novel and revelatory.

At the same time, the readings were genuinely useful for thinking about translation as a practice. One idea I find myself returning to is that a translation can, in some cases, be “better” than the original. A clear example is The Three-Body Problem, whose global success is inseparable from its English translation. The original Chinese text contains language that now reads as dated or sexist such as repeatedly describing a female character simply as “a beauty” and the translation arguably made the work more legible and acceptable to a global readership. There is also the blunt reality that most readers of a translation will never read the original text; if they could, they would simply read it instead. This is true even for judges of prestigious literary prizes. That fact grants enormous power to the translator and requires a shared trust that everyone involved is acting in good faith.

What worries me, reading this controversy, is the possibility that if translators push the boundaries too far, that trust could erode, and the entire system could begin to break down. If no one trusts translations anymore, then the bridge between languages collapses. The critiques also reminded me of how similar translation is to theater: a translated novel is like a particular production of a play, not the play itself. A good play can have a bad production. That distinction feels intuitive to me as a theater-maker, but it is fascinating to see it articulated in the context of fiction.

I was also struck by the discussion of “standard novelese” the recycled vocabulary and rhythms that circulate across contemporary novels. I’ve noticed this for a long time, and I feel the same fatigue in theater, where certain lines and gestures reappear endlessly across different plays. One advantage of being a second-language user, I think, is that we are less likely to fall into these inherited tropes. We approach language with a slightly estranged, fresher eye and that estrangement, rather than being a weakness, can be a real artistic strength.

03/02 Reading Response - Sanjana Thakur

On my flight back to Boston from Mumbai, after winter break, I started reading Human Acts by Han Kang. I cried on my flight, on my layover, and in line at TSA. This was the first book I’d read by Han Kang, and I found it to be absolutely devastating. I described the prose, to myself, using similar language than is pointed out re: The Vegetarian––“spare” comes to mind. I haven’t yet read The Vegetarian, but it is on my To-Be-Read for this year, as is The White Book, so I have to admit I skimmed some parts of the Parks and Yoon articles for fear of spoilers. Still, I found the question Tim Parks opens with very compelling: “How can I judge a translation if I don’t know the original language?” 

My partner and I read poems together every night, and he is often critical––but if a poem is translated, he says, “Oh, well, it’s translated. I’ll give it some leeway.” I think this stems from the impulse, as is articulated in the S.K. Yoon article, to treat the original text as ‘production’––“strong” and “generative” (940)––and the translation as “dependent”, playing “the inferior role of ‘reproduction’” (940) instead of seeing literary translators as creative writers. Or, in other words, the original as ‘male’ and the translation as ‘female’, which is a thread Deborah Smith introduces in the final two paragraphs of her essay elucidating her process towards translation. I found the Smith essay pretty balanced and persuasive. Like Emma Ramadan, she references Madhu Kaza’s Kitchen Table Translations and seems in favour of “resisting domestication”, of “errant, disobedient translation.” Again, then, I wonder: how much of a departure from the original text is too far, and is that a personal choice each translator makes? Or, like Jeffrey Angles’ talked about in his presentation, is that a choice mediated by outside factors, like tradition or fandom?

Yoon takes this question of faithfulness further, arguing that Smith’s translation, because it doesn't prioritise fidelity to the original text, is itself a feminist act. Where there were moments I was compelled––the idea that “translators recover women’s works lost in patriarchy to reshape male-oriented canons” (940), for example––I did have some questions. Yoon says, “In The Vegetarian, her infidelity to the source text, and consequently to ideals of the patriarchal control is clearly exposed” (940). Is the argument, then, that Han Kang’s Korean text does have ‘fidelity to the ideals of patriarchal control’? Yoon also says that feminist translation “wakes the voice of women oppressed in patriarchal language”. I think I just wonder about the nuance in that statement – are the women she’s referring to characters in the works, or authors/writers with agency themselves? 

A silly aside: In Charse Yun’s essay, he posits that the difference between the styles of Han Kang’s Korean original and Deborah Smith’s translation might be akin to “the plain, contemporary style or Raymond Carver being garnished with the elaborate diction of Charles Dickens”. The reference to Carver makes me wonder if another potential comparison might even be Carver pre Gordon Lish’s edits and post, like, for example, "The Bath" and "A Small, Good Thing". 

I really enjoyed reading all three Petrarch prefaces and learning about what each of the translators found crucial or valuable in Petrarch’s work, and how that manifested in the choices each of them made in their translations––whether to keep rhyme, whether to keep consistent metre, how much to keep syntax, and so on. I found David Young’s preface particularly illuminating because of his inclusion of different translation examples of the same Petrarch poem, as well as how he used the preface as an opportunity to explicitly be in dialogue with and learning from so many other poets and translators, even those whose choices he disagreed with. I especially enjoyed his opening paragraph: “Translating is a most peculiar activity. On the one hand it seems inevitably doomed both to inadequacy and to incompleteness. On the other hand, it offers a kind of loaves-and-fishes legerdemain: where one poem existed, two now stand, related but different, alike but occupying different linguistic territories and, in some cases, different ages and eras. Is a translated poem the evil twin of the original, or is it a miraculous clone, a musical transposition whereby one valuable thing is replicated, its value effectively doubled?”