Hanok - Part 1 This year's conference of Korean translators was quite a success, since the number of participants had increased fourfold, despite less panelists almost like at all the whole ambience well, according to those who were there last year it had clearly improved.
. For us it was
two days a bunch of lectures by experts in the field of the (Korean) Literature and Translation, which made my first meeting with Korean authors. What would bring us even with the best aspect of the conference: In addition to the translators of all training and experience level course officials promoters, authors from Korea and elsewhere, literary critics, journalists, etc., were present, so you really had a meeting, in which could analyze the main problem from all sides. And this problem is the same as with just about any other area where you can "Korean" prefix:
.
Why is it that Korean literature (= high culture of modernity) is not perceived?
.
expected, all played each other on the buck. The translators were the sponsors with their regulations, the problem for the authors, the translators, who often have no idea, for the critics group there were of course the authors who write just nonsense that one can not read international will and the sponsors pushed the responsibility in all directions, but especially on the government.
.
fact, there were some main lines of argument that an American translator with more than 25 years of professional translation is concise and to the delight of the audience under the title "Land of speech" summarized. Korea is aware of his problems, they will be discussed until the resignation and lit from all sides. And then no one takes the issue of trading in the hand but all thank beartig for the suggestions and go home. And so he has to a certain point also right.
.
Other points are just as obvious and were swept by his general and very boisterous, even polemical way but under the carpet. A English professor, another American professor of Yonsei and a Korean literary critic summarized the presentations together in their pragmatic and calm: #
.
fixation: The funding institutions (KLTI and Daesan Foundation), need achievement as they tend to be to promote modern works, most of authors who are successful (because the evidence does not have one, why he is now on share value) and best of all by authors who are still alive, so that it some point can award a Nobel Prize. And to a certain extent it is a really well here before and would not happen to cultural export of culture will, but only one of the last international prices / title that you have not got to reap. With Prof. Hwang was the same game. He had to meet quotas, it should operate internationally, so he gets the Nobel Prize. These quotas (so and so many works per year, from so many authors in so many languages) are the death for high-quality translations.
.
Quality: The quality is a coin with two sides. Both the quality is important on the part of authors and the quality on the part of translators. On both sides there are a lot of potential criticism. Here again dashed against O * Rourke, when he said that modern literature was bad, not simply reading. In fact, I can agree with him in many cases. Virtually all panelists agreed that the Korean literary elite that supported in the '70s and '80s by its commitment to democracy literature and wanted to shake up the signs of the times have hardly recognized. The trend of the international literature goes for years, decades away from political literature, criticism of capitalism as such towards the navel of the human existence, but also includes its social environment, but much more universal than the survival of Mr. Kim to show in Seoul. This universality found by many Japanese authors is now missing, many of the major Korean writers entirely.
.
Then came the same question of an author, where to stay for Korean literature or Korean, if you describe universal human. To which class of American literature professor countered:
.
a music producer Park Jin-young, once said to an interview question, whether he was trying to interfere in Korean music its American origin, that it was the wrong question already. Even if he would be exhausting 100% to produce American music, there's always the factor that he himself was Koreans and Korean thereby automatically incorporated elements and approaches in his art. I found a really nice summary of the problem. Sure, I find "real" Korean humor, this warmth that comes from being copied, incredibly great, but this now can be even without Korean-training does not sympathize for a European reader. So you have to come to terms containing.
.
Limit is worth adding that the Korean literary market not as a microcosm is compatible with the major markets of the world. Koreans prefer to write short stories, logic is not a must, preferably has to record poems known motifs. Add a splash is easier to literature (historicist materials, Internet stories, etc.). That is what will sell tearing in China and Southeast Asia, but in Europe. Europeans read novels, novels that can think and they laugh.
.
In effect then were probably all agree that it once again on the Korean image as such incoming and contribute nothing to the phenomena such as Hallyu dissemination of high culture. A Japanese journalist asked, once the most famous Korean to Japanese translator at a news conference: "I did not know that in Korea and correct literature is written, beyond the level of television drama."
.
The Hallyu, Korea has done so not too much good in Asia: Korea is perceived as a producer shallow pop culture that has overwhelmed the delicate beginnings of the reception of true art perfect, like a wave just does.
.
So, a hard and rocky road on the way to world fame, in which all parties should take at themselves. That the criticism but again KLTI focused, I found it unfair to say the least. If anyone with a program like ours, etc. authoring programs provide a systematic development work, but then we do. That things are going wrong, that's clear, but treat our professors Sun derogatory and arrogant as they were the last bureaucrat without any idea of the world, that was ugly.
.
It got so that said Kevin ORourke the closing dinner of our all highly esteemed Prof. Kim Yun-jin run into the trap left by he had his first promised a toast to speak and then only briefly said "he could not now , because he was too excited to see if a Korean would have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. "crappy kind like that.
.
