A 30-Volume Poem?

Buried in an otherwise uninspiring article in the nearly worthless Korea Times is this gem:

Among others, poet Ko Un's ``Maninbo'' (Ten Thousand Lives) has been completed 23 years after he started writing the popular historical poem in 1986. It will be published early next year over 30 volumes.

He started the monumental poem during his imprisonment with a determination to describe every person he had ever met. ``Maninbo'' represents one of the major classics of 20th-century Korean literature. Ko has often been nominated for the Nobel Prize.

Holy Cow! That's a lot of verses and might actually be the kind of achievement that is worthy of nomination for a nobel prize in lit. Ko Un's homepage is also worth checking out, I give it bonus points for seeming to work perfectly in Firefox.

That's how you do it!

OK then... translate some literature the world cares about..

I shouldn't be so cranky about this, but the Korea Times has an article about its translation contest winners in which, well.. read it..

Korea Times President and Publisher Park Moo-jong hoped more English translations of Korean literature would boost the chances of a Korean winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in the future.

"It would have been nice if a Korean won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. But with your participation and love, hopefully, we can have a Nobel Prize winner in the near future," Park said during the ceremony.

Yeah.. so stop translating so many works that have no chance...

Ahem..

rant over..

looking at what did win the translation contest I am pleased to see a work by Park Wan-suh's "Ode for Longing." If there is a Korean author whose subject and style resonate when translated, it is Park (Who ate up all the Shinga, There a Petal Silently Falls, etc..). I must shamefully admit that I don't know the works of the other writers whose translations won, which means over this break, I have tons of reading to do.

Win-win!

And stop obsessing about the prize.. holy cow... not everything in life is judged by the judges...

;-)

Korean Nobel Prize for Literature Update: Ko Un?

According to Newsweek, Ko Un is in the running:

Ko Un—The South Korean poet has written short lyrics as well as lengthy epics, drawing his material from decades of experience in which he has seen South Korea’s struggles with Japanese occupation, the Korean war, and the transition to democracy. He’s also been a political activist most of his life, to the point of having been imprisoned multiple times for his activism.

And at least one site sets his odds as low as 20/1.

In the Korea Times, more Korean discussion about the need to win a Nobel Prize for Literature. Once again the focus is a bit off to me.. One of the women featured says:

"Jessica and I have always talked about the lack of English translations of Korean literature and movies. Although there are many good works, when they are translated in English there are mistranslations and even grammar mistakes. We felt this was so unfortunate,'' Han said.

And the general point might be accurate - to say that there is not enough translation over all, but then to jump to the many good works which are mistranslated or have grammatical mistakes (and of course they exist, I recently went ballistic reading a God-awful translation of Aunt Suni), is to ignore that many of the works that are translated are "good" to Koreans, but have little impact in the West because their topics are not appropriate. Just one example has been the fairly relentless tendency of Korea to translate its ‘literature of national division’ (pundan munhak or 분단 문학 if my Hangul isn't too cruddy) which has very little relevance to the West and is bleak in a non-existential way, and thus not very attractive to potential readers or voters.

If that sort of problem is not addressed, no amount of technically perfect translation is going to help Korea win its first Nobel for Literature.

And, to be fair, in other spots, the women's analysis was exactly correct, such as:

I think the Korean government should support the translation of Korean literature. People from other countries know a lot about Japanese literature, because there are lots of translated Japanese works in other countries. This makes people interested in Japanese culture too,'' said Han.

The link between Japanese literature hitting the US in 1970 and the cultural wave that followed shortly thereafter is pretty clear, and with Korean food about to take off, and its products already ubiquitous, it is time for the literature to get in position to do its part in globalizing Korean culture. Also, in this case, it seems that the work that the translators have been doing is spreading the thematic range of translated work, which is something that can't happen fast enough.

Having said that, however, and given Han's first complaint that there aren't enough works translated I have some trouble understanding her last claim that,

There are so many great works by Korean writers that the world should see. Also, I think that the best way of creating serious interest in Korean literature and culture would be to have a multitude of translations for each piece. Often you see just one 'definitive' translation of one work. Translation is an interpretative art and we need more than just one perspective,'' she said.

Surely, in a world in which there currently aren't enough translations in general, it is unwise to multiply translate works that have already been published?

This may not be the way to increase Korea's chances of getting that Nobel Peace prize

This is a classic piece of jingoism - the reason Korea is not getting more Nobel prizes is that, ironically, its language is too good.

I far prefer Yun Cho'e's approach of doing good work.

BTW - because this seemed so combustible, the translator had a quick go at the language .. which I have reproduced below the video.




Translator Says:

Each language differs in depicting sound, and Korean is the most developed language in depicting and expressing sound. Korean is very developed in “sound symbolism (onomatopoeia)”. We have “red”, “clear(?)”, “dark red”, “rust (and opaque) red”. There are more words, right? And a brook flows “jol jol jol”, “jul jul jul” “jil jil jil”, “tjol tjol tjol”, “zjual zjual zjual”, “qual qual qual” and we can feel by only listening the volume of water flowing. There is no other language but Korean that is developed in this fashion. I’m an English instructor, but I am also a Korean enthusiast. My principle is that one must speak Korean well to speak English well. (Personally,) I devote much effort to speak better Korean, as much as the effort I put into further studying English. And I love the Republic of Korea. Truly I do. You need to speak English well, and you need to speak Korean correctly. Korean language is extremely superior. (Because of that,) Translating Korean into English is too difficult. Hence, there has not been a Nobel Literature Award for Koreans. Did you know this? Why are you chuckling? You are chuckling because you feel dumbfounded, right? You are not laughing at yourself (for your own inability?), right? How many Nobel Literature Laureates are there in Japan? A factoid for you: 2 (Laureates). One time, late Midang, Seo Jung Ju, contended for the award, but the honor went to Japan. Then, why Japan has…. In fact do you know how substandard Japan had been? If we had not introduced our culture to them during the Baekje Dynasty in the 4th Century, they might still be living primitively even today. Then why is that we have not received the Nobel Literature Award with all this superior culture and heritage, while Japan won it 2 times? Why? It’s the translating Korean (literature) is difficult. In case of Japanese, the language is shabby and that’s why it is very easy to translate it into English. However, Korean is too superior to a point where no other language on earth can compare. Hence translation is (nearly) impossible. It’s not my own claim. It’s the truth. Do you know the poem Seungmu (Buddhist Dance), by Cho Ji Hun?

This thread fair-white peaked hat
Is finely folded (into) a fluttering butterfly

“Silently a flower falls” by Ch’oe Yun

A rather long article on a writer of whom I had not heard. It sounds like Yun uses a pretty dramatic narrative technique:

The story is divided into eleven sections. Ch’oe Yuns creates through the application of modern techniques and instruments a chaotic atmosphere that reflects the effects on the baffled society during and after the Kwangju massacre. Ch’oe choice to implement such different and dissimilar figures in her story is perfect to restruct the confusion of the massacre. The created structure of several voices is a unique technique, to give the reader an insight in how far the events have influenced the lifes of different people.

I'll have to try to find this and see if that reads as confusing as it sounds here.

One of her other works, The Flower with Thirteen Fragrances is available here with a short biography of the author. There is also an interview with Yun, here that includes a funny comment on the current Korean obsession with winning a Nobel Prize for literature and a mention of Cho Se-hui's A Tiny Ball Launched by a Dwarf, which is next in line in the PKLT list of books I need to review.