Comp Lit #1

The Translator sends along an item of interest:

I was reading the pdf file (This is a link directly to the PDF of "Twentieth Century Korean Literature." ) and came across a poem on page 14.

I thought it would be interesting (for what end, I don't know) to translate it myself and compare

The Translator's version is superior, because it is more concrete and less conceptual. This preference has NOTHING to do with technical accuracy, because I am certainly not qualified to judge that (and don't have a copy of the Korean text at hand in any case).

NOTE: The Translator’s version is a first-draft and reproduced here entirely without editing, and I am certain Ko’s work was vetted at some point. The means there are a few small glitches in the Translator’s version, but ones that would have been worked out in about 5 minutes of process (and in the next version, perhaps we will do this) during the editing stage.

The work on the left is by Ko Ch'angsu, that on the right of the Translator



First a couple of things at the meta-level

• I prefer the broken up version because it allows conceptual chunking. The enjambment and two-verse format makes the Ko version of the poem seem more monolithic and less delicate.
  
  
• Their is a critical difference between who the poems addresses. The Ko translation is in the third person – focusing on the romantic concept of love in some cases and referring to “he” in others. By adopting the second person, the Translator’s version focuses more directly on the lover, the “you.” I should say I also prefer the Translator’s translation in this because it recognizes the tendency of Korean to drop pronouns, and the preference of English for using them.
  
  The “my love is gone” reminds me of middle-ages “woe is me-itry” that never impressed me as anything else than a dutiful discharge of the romantic requirement to feel unrequited.
  

The Translator is also better at choosing vocabulary and images, in order to create a feeling of specificity in the poem. Here are four examples:

• Breaking versus shattering of the light/tint – the Translator’s choice is more dramatic although I slightly tend towards "light" as the object.
  
  
• On a breeze of sigh(s) versus “a breath of breeze.” The Translator uses a specifically human image (“sigh”) while Ko prefers a more general and distanced one (“breeze”). For all I know that is a horrible mis-translation, but in English it makes the line much less diffuse and drills tightly down to the essentially human nature of the poem. This “human” nature is one that BOTH translations insist on (“love after all .. is human”) and thus I think the Translator’s approach is closer to the philosophical basis of the poem as I read it through dual translations.
  
  
• The Translator's metaphor of lost control (the "turned round" compass point of the individual) seems better to me than the more general conceptual notion of Ko (fate altered). I would alter the "turned round" to "spinning," but that is mere editing.
  
  
• Similarly the cliched "bursting heart" of Ko, is not nearly as impressive as the much more vivid, "the astonished heart explodes," which also has a nice touch of anthropomorphism ("astonished") to it.

There are several other examples of this that pop up in a comparison, but as I'm off to the bookstore, I don't have time to follow them all up. There are some slightly rough areas in the Translator's version, but I see those as a function of where that version is in terms of editing and polishing. All in all, the Translator's version is much more direct, expressive, and English, to my eyes..

More on this, I think, when I get back..

Novel Serialization; The Web; Korean Democratization

In Part One of this series(?) I talked a little bit about the historical fact that Korean authors have often published their works serially, in newspapers and magazines. As I’ve thought about this a bit more, and done some reading, I’ve tentatively concluded:

This was a conscious social effort at modernization with a strong latter emphasis on democratization

I ended my last post by noting that the newspapers, at least, seem to be serializing less (BTW – this is why I need a nice Korean partner here – I have this sense, but not enough Korean or cultural skill to turn up actual numbers) .

Now, authors have moved on to the next best thing – the Internet. The Translator sums it up, “Big time authors are making moves on going back to serialization, not on newspapers, but on the internet” and the evidence is obvious:

• Park Bum-shin has published his novel “Cholatse” on Naver
• Hwang Suk-young has serialized `Gaebapbaragibyeol'' on Naver.
• Jung I-hyun, has posted her new novel,``You Don't Know'' on the Kyobo Website
• Novelist Gong Ji-young recently serialized her novel ``The Crucible'' on Daum,.

The Translator, being a bomb-thrower at heart, argues that this trend is merely the literary elite finally catching the tail of the internet beast and trying to ride it for advantage. He argues that this kind of self-publication has been occurring since the 1990s but that the literati ignored it because the subject matter tended to be “sci-fi fantasy, martial arts, sex and violence and more lowbrow stuff.”

It is certainly true that there seems to have been a 20-year lag between the opening of the internet and the appearance of Korean authors on it. And if Korean writers were solely interested in democratization (or any other political goal), you might have expected someone to begin serialization prior to now.

It is also true that no such lag existed between the publishing of newspapers and the printing of novel serializations: They began simultaneously. It is also clear that this alliance was expressly built to promulgate an educational goal:

The change from traditional to modern literature during the Enlightenment period was largely due to the effects of the New Education and the Korean Language and Literature movement. After the Kabo Reforms of 1894, a new brand of education was enforced, new Western-style schools were established, and new textbooks for teaching Western knowledge were published. The literature of the Enlightenment Period secured its social base through newly emerged media like newspapers. Most newspapers, including the Tongnip Shinmun (The Independent), Hwangsong Shinmun (The Imperial City Newspaper), Taehan maeil Shinbo (Korean Daily News), Cheguk Shinmun (Imperial Newspaper), Mansebo (The Forever Report), Taehan minbo (The Korean People's Report) all published serial novels, as well as shijo, and kasa.
http://www.asianinfo.org/asianinfo/korea/literature.htm

That this goal was an essentially nationalistic one is also self-evident. Yu Beongcheon notes that Yi Kwang-su’s alliance with the Tonga Ilbo was always perceived from Yu’s side as a way to promulgate novels that were a “cover for nationalism,” (Yu 156”) the hazards of Japanese censorship notwithstanding.

It isn’t unfair to conclude, then, that the first serializations were in fact conscious manifestations of the political will of publishers and the government, who backed that will up with their publication dollars. And some of these dollars, of course, went to the writers.

From an author’s perspective, however, the web lacks a direct link to profit, and thus it is most likely attractive from a purely political point of view, not from an economic one. It is worth noting that the elite, just as we average Joe’s and Hyeok’s, need to eat. And pay for big cars and houses. ;-)

So the Translator’s stance that this recent move to the web may be explained away as Philistinism in nature, is at least partly defensible.

Still, I am not completely willing to toss the literary elite out on their ears for the lag in online publishing, rather I see what has happened as a belated understanding that with traditional publication opportunities drying up writers are in some ways continuing with their writerly and pedagogic goals in ways that they know might not directly pay them off.

In a way you could call that noble, even if it has been partly forced upon them.

Consequently, the new trend towards web-serialization seems to be a laudatory continuation of the noble (admittedly self-serving, but nonetheless noble) Korean tendency to use literature as a living, breathing, political tool.

Which loops back to the question of the novels mentioned previously. Not all of them are available in English, but here is what a Google search reveals about their political content:

Park Bum-shin’s “Cholatse” is aimed at youths who ignore important goals and dreams in favor of rank materialism. The novel features, that most Korean of modern novelistic tricks, two brothers who must fight and then reunite for success. Essentially, in content and metaphor, it is an intensely political novel and fits nicely into the nation-building narrative I have attempted to establish above.

While I could not find an English review, Hwang Suk-young who wrote `Gaebapbaragibyeol,'' is an avowedly political writer who has said:

What is known as globalization is in fact Americanization: we need to stop following the American model and build a movement that wil close the gap between the rich and the poor and give more purchasing power to the developing world.

Jung I-hyun’s `”You Don't Know,'' does not seem to have an English summary or review online.

Novelist Gong Ji-young’s `The Crucible'' is completely in the democratizing/political line of serialized Korean literature. It takes place in Gwangju, which immediately tips a history-savvy reader that the work will deal with issues of oppression and punishment (Gwangju was the location of the famous 5.19 incident in which troops shot protestors down in the streets).

This is a small sample, of course, but what it does seem to indicate to me is that at least the general trend of the last century, that is the serialization of polemical novels that once took place in newspapers, has now transplanted to the web.

That fact can’t be anything but good for Korean literature and Korean politics.

Maybe I should have Concentrated on Bibimbap?

According to an article from the Yonhap it's all about food!

Original translation by virtue of the translator...

(서울=연합뉴스) 강진욱 기자 = 외국인들이 한국에 대해 가장 큰 관심을 갖고 있는 것은 한식인 것으로 나타났다.

(Seoul, Yeonhap News) Kang Jin Uk Reporter. For foreigners, Korean food is what draws the most interest about Korea.

사이버 외교사절단 반크는 올 상반기 외국인 회원 사이트(http://chingu.prkorea.com)에 가입한 1천500여 명을 대상으로 영화와 드라마, 음식, 음악, 스포츠, 언어, 종교, 공연, 연예인, 역사, 문학, 게임, 경제, 정치 등 14가지 가운데 가장 관심있는 분야가 어떤 것인지를 놓고 설문조사를 벌인 결과 한국 음식을 택한 외국인이 전체의 41%(900여명)로 1위를 차지했다.

VANK, a non-governmental volunteer group became a cyber diplomatic envoy themselves conducted a survey of more than 1,500 subscribers to its website for foreigners. Out of 14 subjects (movie and drama, food, music, sports, language, religion, performances, celebrities, history, literature, game, economy and politics) the survey asked the website subscribers to pick the subject they are interested in the most. The result shows that Korean food ranked #1, raking in 41% of the vote, or more than 900 subscribers

한식 다음으로 외국인들의 관심이 높은 분야는 한국 드라마(23%), 한국인(19%), 한국영화(8%), 한국 패션(2%) 순이었다.

Nest to Korean food, foreigners were interested in Korean drama (23%), Koreans (19%), Korean movies (8%) and Korean (clothes) fashion (2%).

반크는 6일 "외국인들이 한국에 대해 관심을 갖고 있는 것을 조사해 한국의 국가브랜드를 높이기 위해" 설문 조사를 벌였다면서 "한국음식이 국제사회에서 한국인을 더 매력있게 만드는 '향기'로 작용하고 있다는 것을 알 수 있었다"고 밝혔다.

VANK stated that it conducted the survey to identify the areas foreigners are interested in about Korea in order to better promote Korea’s national branding. It also clarified “we found that Korean food was functioning as an ‘aroma’ in making ¬Koreans more attractive in the international community.”

반크는 "한국의 관광, 무역, 한국인의 호감도에 큰 영향을 끼치는 한국 음식을 세계인들에게 제대로 알리면 알릴수록 더 많은 외국인이 한국을 방문하러 올 것이고, 한국 상품을 구입할 것이며 한국인들과 사귀고 싶어할 것"이라고 주장했다.

VANK claims that “Korean food exerts significant influence on Korea’s tourism, trade and even builds a positive image for Koreans in general. The more we promote the food to people of the world, the more foreigners will want to visit Korea, purchase Korean products and want to get to know Koreans.”

반크는 이어 "한국의 국가 브랜드와 이미지의 중요성이 갈수록 높아지고 있는 지금 한국 음식이야말로 세계 속에 저평가된 한국의 국가이미지를 획기적으로 올릴 수 있는 비밀무기임에 틀림없다"면서 "곧 한식 세계화 캠페인 사이트를 구축해 한국음식을 세계화시키며 세계인들에게 한국음식을 제대로 홍보할 계획"이라고 밝혔다.

Moreover, VANK feels absolutely certain that “Korea’s national branding and image has become more important than ever, and Korean food is a secret weapon to substantially elevate Korea’s image, particularly when the image has suffered a ‘cheap’ image in the world.” Also, VANK notes that it “will build up a campaign website to globalize Korean food to let the world know the food and how to market Korean food properly.”

반크는 또 회원들에게 외국 친구와 인터넷상에서 펜팔을 할 때 불고기나 비빔밥 등 한국 대표 음식 열 가지를 소개하라고 미션을 주는 등 한식 알리기 캠페인을 벌이고 있다면서 외국인 친구가 직접 한국음식을 만들어 보며 가족들과 함께 즐거운 시간을 보냈다거나 음식을 통해 외국 친구와 더 친밀한 사이가 되었다는 등 다양한 경험담이 전해지고 있다고 덧붙였다.

VANK is already conducting a campaign to promote Korean food [on a personal level] by giving a mission to its Korean members. For instance, when doing a pen-pal with foreign friends, the members are to introduce 10 representative Korean food, including bulgogi and bibimbap. As a result, VANK mentions that there have been various instances in which its Korean members have become closer to their foreign friends, or foreigner friends have had a good time with their family members making Korean food.

Of course Hamlet is Superior in the Original Klingon!

ALTERNATE TITLE: THE DIFFICULTY OF LANGUAGE - THE IMPORTANCE OF TRANSLATION

The video below, other than bringing me more hits than anything else I’ve ever posted, also got THE TRANSLATOR back to the blog.

It’s a win no matter how you look at it!

What we seem to have come up with, after a flurry of emails back and forth, is that, duh, languages are different. Part of this was also the result of a question my students asked about translating Korean poetry.

They said, 'in Korean we have so many (“too many” as they alarmingly put it) ways to say “yellow” but in English there is only one.' Of course that isn’t true – even in colors we have more than one yellow - ochre for instance. But I noted that in English we appropriate nouns (again, a "duh." English is a noun-based and taxonomic language in a platonic culture) as colors.

In the course of my conversation with THE TRANSLATOR he noted (although my students still disagree I have to accept that this is likely a result of my bad explanation of the question) that in Korean nouns can be used to describe colors. Still, there was something odd about his response and I think I tracked it down. Koreans can use nouns as colors, but they need to append "색" to it. In English this is not necessary as, in fact, some words for colors are exactly the same as the color of the noun to which the refer (e.g. "orange" or "buttercup" - no one even considers the physical critter, instead we know we are talking about color through the context of conversation. This is also true of things like "chocolate" or "banana." In context we do not need to indicate this is a color. This might be a linguistic feature, but to me it seems more like 'how' we describe color and should be added to the # of colors we have).

In some ways this discussion reminds me of the cultural confusion that underlie the one-time claim that eskimos had an unusually large number of words for snow. In fact, this claim (still bandied about) was based on linguistic misunderstandings and if you have time, this excellent debunking of the myth is also a good introductory primer on how and why these misunderstandings between languages occur.

But then THE TRANSLATOR went on to note something I consider far more important and that is that whatever differences there are between the languages, it is difficult to claim, as our behatted video-dude below does, that one language is objectively better than another.

In fact, THE TRANSLATOR'S response was so comprehensive and brilliant, and came with such a nice, similar, example from English, that I quote it nearly in its entirety. He begins by discussing the point the hated dude was trying to make about Hanguk-mal and sound:

What works in Korean is that vowel sounds carries certain quality other than its own sound. For example, "ㅏ" is much brighter, lighter, smaller than "ㅓ". "ㅗ" and "ㅜ" works in a similar manner, though not entirely the same. Hence, as in the brook example, "jol jol jol (졸졸졸)" is for a tiny brook, whereas "jul jul jul (줄줄줄)" is for a sizable brook.

Do you remember this passage from the article we translated for (Name Redacted)?

Another critical element unique to literature for children is the fact that adults often read the text out loud to children. Translating without fully understanding the significance of this may result in a text too tedious to ears because the phonetic and phonologic significance of the ST would not have been reflected appropriately to the TT. For example, let us consider Korean and English as the source language (SL) and target language (TL), respectively. If it were possible to implement similar rythmns, and the onomatopoeia and mimesis were equally developed in both languages, speakability would not be much of an issue in translation. However, English and Korean are utterly dissimilar in such aspects. Each syllable is pronounced with equal amount of stress in Korean language, whereas English employs pitch with stressed and non-stressed syllables. Fundamentally, English is tonal, dynamic and durational. Add rhyming to these and the rhythm becomes stronger. In Korean language, matching the number of syllables and utilizing onomatopoeia and mimesis are the techniques used to bring out its own rhythm. Precision in transferring the source text content is a must in translation, but it is also necessary in children’s literature translation to consider the rhythm the reader will follow when reading out loud the translated text to a child.

In the passage, (NAME REDACTED) points out the fact the onomatopoeia and mimesis are not equally developed in Korean and English, alluding that certain quality is more "developed" in one language over the other. English language has rhymes and stresses to create rhythm, whereas Korean language uses onomatopoeia and mimesis to create rhythm. Let's not get too technical about this, but IMHO description of an object's quality (color, volume, etc) is built into the vowel system in Korean language, which is not the same in English. Hence, it is more efficient to create onomatopoeia and mimesis in Korean.

Being the keen critic of culture and language that he is (and supergenius!) he immediately adds a similar example of a facility in English (to which he generally alluded above) that is difficult in Korean.

OTOH, Korean language doesn't understand rhyme because everything ends with either "nida" or "yo". Rap is still struggling to settle in Korea because Koreans find rhyming funny and awkward, particularly when Koreans rap in Korean language. Who wants rhyming when all endings are the same?

These are simply characteristics of a language. These qualities may compare with other qualities in other languages, but the do not compose any qualification that one language is overall superior to others.

Weird, rappers say "Yo" a lot, and it still doesn't translate well? ;-P

To keep me on the straight and narrow(!) about colors, and to put a concluding remark to the video below, THE TRANSLATOR concludes:

And that's what the guy in the video failed for me. He was quickly building up an argument that because Korean can do 24 different shades of yellow, but it's not so in English, that Korean language must be superior to English and thus translation into an inferior language is impossible, therefore Koreans don't get any Nobel Prizes for Literature. His leap of faith is full of holes...but that does not mean there are not 24 shades of yellow in Korean, excluding object colors.

Which is just right really. Languages aren't superior, instead they are different. This is why skilled translation is difficult and important - it takes a big brain to figure these differences out and to determine how to take something that has an easy linguistic meaning in one language and to translate it into a language in which the meaning can't be clear through the linguistic tool used in the original language.

Or, as THE TRANSLATOR puts it, in superior language (and in an argument that also applies to the original Japanese/Korean model):

What does this all mean? Korean language has its particularities and English has its own. That's all. Are there more words that describe various tints of "yellow" in Korean than in English. I think so. Is English more "precise" when it comes to "when" things happened, had happened, has happened, will happen, is going to happen, will have happened, etc?

I can probably name a few more.

Are these qualities evidence that one language is superior than others? I say it's comparing apples and oranges. We're equal, but not the same, right?

Be careful though; just because we want to argue that languages are not superior or inferior to others, ignoring certain particularities of a language is not smart, either!

And so, the conversation continues. ;-)

PS - If you didn't get the Star Trek reference in the title, you are insufficiently nerdy!

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