[W Forum] Beautiful Actress and Good Poetry

Jeong Eungwi, Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Professor Jeong Eungwi, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Every year in October, the Nobel Prize is announced. This year, the award went to Abdullahi Zakaria Gurnah, a refugee writer active in the United Kingdom. Since he is a little-known novelist, everyone was surprised, and because his works have not yet been translated into Korean, readers’ curiosity turned into a long wait. In such a situation, I always think about the importance of literary translation and the role of translators. Literature is about sharing diverse experiences and empathy in living as human beings and understanding this world well. Literary translation is a barometer that shows the level of culture, and among literature, poetry meets readers with a sensitive sense honed by language. As someone who translates Korean poetry into English to introduce it abroad and translates Anglo-American poetry into Korean to meet readers, I often think that the importance of translation should not be highlighted only as a commercial special during the Nobel Prize season.

Even in the case of Louise Gl?ck, the poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, many readers eagerly await translations. When I meet readers asking, “When will it come out?” I sometimes feel anxious. As a poetry researcher and translator, and also from the reader’s perspective, it is not easy to put a full stop on a translation after much contemplation. Recently, I want to share the interesting yet arduous dilemma of a translator by giving an example of a phrase I have pondered over for a long time.

There is a phrase in a poem that I translated as “bare the heart.” It is a part where the poet’s poetic resolution stands out in a story sharing despair. Regarding this translation, the editor suggested softening the tone to “reveal the heart.” The request to use a prettier expression clearly shows the editor’s wish to be kind to readers, and the translator’s dilemma, who understands this well, repeats. I ask: what kind of poetry do readers really expect?

My answer is that readers want to encounter good poetry, not pretty poetry. At a recent international symposium on translation, a distinguished translation scholar from the University of Chicago said, “Translators are actors.” It is an apt metaphor for literary translation. If an actor only tries to act prettily, they ruin the role. Let’s return to the previous example. Have you ever forced your despair onto someone else? Or have you faced someone who repeatedly talks about their despair for a long time? Choosing the verb “bare,” the poet’s depiction of the heart’s landscape makes “reveal” sound somewhat ordinary. Forcing despair onto others to empathize, a relationship where both the speaker and listener are deeply wounded in their hearts, a pain expressed as the soul being thoroughly shaken?this is something we sometimes suffer in life. Passing through that pain allows us to see each other better, and love grows by embracing even that bareness. After much deliberation, I insisted on “bare” and sent the manuscript. Translation and editing ultimately share the same heart toward readers, but I laughed to myself wondering if readers realize how fiercely we agonize over this.

Today, I continue to wrestle with the desire to meet readers with beautiful and easy language and the desire of an actor to faithfully reproduce the voice of the original. I want to be a translator-actor who tells good poetry well before being a pretty actor. Translation is a linguistic act accompanied by critical work interpreting the work. Between two different languages, a complex process of translation, editing, and publishing blends into a collaborative effort that produces a poetry collection to meet readers. I sit in front of the computer today, worrying that embracing readers does not conflict with the ethics of translation.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.