Literature Translation Institute's Translation Publishing Support Project Full of Deficiencies

Issues Detected Including Lack of Fairness and Poor Project Management in Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced on the 3rd that it identified issues such as lack of fairness, inefficiency in budget management, and poor project management in the Translation Publishing Support Project conducted by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. The Translation Publishing Support Project is a policy that provides differential translation and publishing support funds to domestic publishers and agencies aiming to publish Korean literature overseas, as well as to foreign publishers, considering volume, language group, genre, etc. Last year, 1.6 billion KRW was invested to support 205 titles.

The Ministry’s investigation confirmed that the project was full of deficiencies. A small number of reviewers were responsible for evaluations over a year, but their qualification criteria were vague and the selection process was also opaque. The Ministry stated, “This project selects more than 200 supported works annually, but the review panel was operated with only 2 to 3 reviewers, failing to secure fairness.”

Regarding the review process, it was pointed out that “the method did not exclude the lowest and highest scores, causing one reviewer’s opinion to be overly represented, and there was a large score variance among selected works. Also, the artistic evaluation scores for the same work varied between rounds.”

The Literature Translation Institute also operated reviewer terms without clear principles. Although not stipulated in the project implementation guidelines, internal directives were followed, but many cases of non-compliance were confirmed. The Ministry added, “In the case of Mr. A, his term (1 year) was exceeded by 4 months, and he effectively participated for nearly 3 years by alternating between overseas publisher and domestic publisher support projects.”

Regarding the reviewer selection process, it was also pointed out that “the internal responsible department recommended candidates and the head of the institution decided the priority, but reviewers not included in the list reported annually to the board of directors were sometimes selected.”

The Institute also caused poor review quality by providing dozens of target books for overseas publisher support on the day of the review. The Ministry stated, “There are 50 to 60 books reviewed at once,” adding, “It is practically difficult to conduct a careful review under such a structure.” Furthermore, “In the 2021 management evaluation, the overseas publisher support project was criticized for needing to balance not only artistic quality but also publisher capability, publication plans, and market acceptance, but no improvements were made.”

Post-management was also inadequate. Of the fourteen fully translated works supported for domestic publishers in 2021, only one was published locally. Sales performance reports from overseas publishers were not properly implemented. Among 753 titles subject to sales performance investigation over five years from 2017 to 2021, 140 titles were omitted.

Park Bo-gyun, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, stated, “It is shocking that unfair and poor project management practices have been revealed at a time when global interest in K-books is focused, with our authors’ works being shortlisted for the Booker Prize two years in a row,” and added, “The Literature Translation Institute urgently needs leadership awareness and a changing attitude.” He emphasized, “Since the Translation Publishing Support Project is a key project to promote our country’s books overseas, unfair practices must be strictly identified and effectively improved.”

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