This
was written for Technovate, an international, Toronto-based
translation company, in November 2009
Award for US Academics’ Korean
Poetry Translations
Two US university
professors have been awarded for their outstanding
collaboration in translating Korean poetry into English.
Song
Chae-pyong and Anne Rashid were given the
Grand Prize for Poetry at the 40th Modern Korean
Literature Translation Awards, announced today. For the
contest, they submitted a translation of six poems by Kim
Hye-soon, winner of the 2008 Daesan Literary Award.
They chose the poetry of
Kim Hye-soon because of “her
strikingly unique images and her relentless commitment to
social justice,” said Song.
Rashid, of Carlow
University, Pittsburgh, PA, and Korean-born Song, of
Marygrove College, Detroit, MI, were motivated to enter the
competition by the lack of English translations of Korean
literature.
The “long and winding
imagery” of Kim’s poetry made translation a challenge, but
the professors attribute their success to maintaining the
delicate balance between the original language and the
target language.
Song added that
“translation is a constant process,
just like any form of writing. One can become a good
translator only by willing to revise one's draft constantly,
we believe. Anne and I sometimes went through 10 revisions
before feeling that a translation was finished.”
Their
accomplishment is all the more impressive in light of the
judges’ general disappointment with the quality of poetry
translation in this year’s contest.
The judges lamented: “It
is clear that not many people are able to combine a deep
understanding of Korean poetry with the linguistic and
poetic skills required to produce convincing English poems
as translations.”
Despite this, they praised Song and Rashid, remarking that
they “skillfully handled the rhetorical structure and
lyrical flow of the original text.”
Among
the winners in other categories were Irene Park, for her
translation of “Possibly” by Yoon Sung-hee, and Andrew
McCullough, who translated “Ode for Longing” by Park Wan-suh.
