![]() Throughout my four years there, the college would shut down for at least one semester without exception because of the student protests. When I was in college, it was an extremely dark political time in Korean history. ![]() What do you consider to be the attraction or appeal of the source language that you translate from, and/or of the fiction written in that language?įrench became my primary foreign language when I decided to study abroad in France, but my thoughts on French language and literature are also connected to why I chose France to study abroad in the first place. After I entered college, I began reading the foreign texts listed on various course syllabi, and I think reading foreign literature and literary theory frequently demanded a kind of fundamental training in translation. Back then, I was slightly crazed about literature, so I’d charge full-force at anything related to language. I remember being filled with pride that I’d partially translated a foreign work into Korean. Looking back on it now, they were difficult-to-translate works and I’d tackled them without knowing their particular beauty. In high school, I attempted to translate parts of James Joyce’s Dubliners and Albert Camus’ Betwixt and Between, and struggled a great deal. That’s likely how I discovered the joys of translation. Somehow, I discovered some foreign-language books in the library and after reading them in their original language, I started to translate into Korean parts I was uncertain about in order to more fully understand them, or paragraphs that moved me. We learned English as our primary foreign language and French or German as the secondary one in high school. At the time, it seemed like the trend was to read foreign literature in their original languages. It was only later that I was awakened to translation. During high school, when things were financially difficult, I gave my friends short stories or plays that I’d written instead of presents for their birthdays. A few friends and I voluntarily created a literature club called “Pine and Bamboo” (a metaphor symbolizing our unchanging friendship), asking a visiting philosophy lecturer to be our faculty advisor, and I remember we held a kind of showcase for selected works. ![]() That’s how I discovered the allure of writing. Although this was when I was still young, before I officially debuted, I was overwhelmed with the happiness of completing a work as I finished the manuscript and sent it to the editors. ![]() Though my memory is a bit hazy, during winter break in my third year of middle school, I observed a group of aspiring painters at an atelier I was attending to learn drawing and wrote a piece titled “Ruptures” on their growing pains. When I was fifteen, I published my first story in the school journal. Though I read a lot of foreign literature translated into Korean during my middle and high school years, writing my own works was first. What came first for you: writing or translation? The section features their abridged answers.-Ed. Their opinions correspond, but also refract from each other to varying degrees given their unique, personal backgrounds. This section features five respected writer-translators who reminisce, reflect, and ruminate on their experiences of writing and translating.
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