2024-07-30 21:58:57
“Knowing the impact of the Booker Prize, we will be more careful in judging the entries.”
Translator Anton Heo (Heo Jeong-beom, 43), who was recently nominated as a judge for the Booker Prize International, a world-renowned literary award, had a serious expression. He is a talented translator who nominated Jeong Bo-ra’s ‘Curse Rabbit’ (Jeong Bo-ra) and Park Sang-young’s ‘Lovestruck in the City’ for the Booker Prize International in 2022. He is the first Korean to serve as a judge for the Booker Prize. He says he became familiar with English while living abroad, including in the United States, for nine years with his father when he was young. We met him on the 26th to talk about the Booker Prize judging process and the competitiveness of Korean literature.
The Booker International Prize awards ceremony will be held in London, England on May 20th next year. The first round of nominees (12-13 books) will be announced on February 25th next year, and the final nominees (6 books) will be announced on April 8th. Nominations began on the 10th. Regardless of the author’s nationality, works translated into English and published in the UK and Ireland are eligible. The Booker International Prize, which is considered one of the world’s top three literary awards along with the Nobel Literature Prize and the Prix Goncourt, has so far evaluated works written in 63 languages, including Persian, Vietnamese, and Armenian. This is why the Booker Prize is called the “Cultural Olympics.”
As soon as the nominations began, a gag order was issued for the judges. They were not allowed to comment on any of the translated works published between May 1 and April 30 of next year, which are next year’s nominees. They were also prohibited from mentioning them on social networking services and from writing recommendations. Translator Heo laughed, saying, “Even now, I keep getting emails suggesting recommendations, and all I do is reply with, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.’”
This year’s judging panel consists of five people, including him, novelists, poets, editors, and composers. They read and discuss 20 to 30 books a month, and then decide on the candidates by consensus. The judging panel that chose the winners last time read a total of 149 books, and the number of winning works is said to be increasing every year. When Translator Heo was a judge for the 2021 National Translation Award, he read 250 entries. Although he does it because he loves books, it takes a lot of time and effort. When asked about the compensation, he was cautious, saying, “It’s a reasonable amount.”
In recent years, the Booker Prize and Korean literature have been a good match. After Han Kang won the prize in 2016 for The Vegetarian, another novel by Han Kang, White, was nominated in 2018, Jeong Bo-ra’s short story collection Cursed Rabbit in 2022, Cheon Myeong-gwan’s novel Whale in 2023, and Hwang Sok-yong’s novel Three Generations of Railwaymen this year.
He explained that the rise of Korean literature was largely due to changes in translation style. He said that the translation of “The Vegetarian” by British author Deborah Smith led to the full-scale “paraphrasing” for English-speaking readers. Previously, stiff direct translations were mainly done by English-speaking scholars, and were ignored in English-speaking markets. He explained, “Korean literature did not suddenly become great. Korean literature has always been great. It’s just that the style has been established now, so how to translate it to make it work in English-speaking countries.”
Just being nominated for the Booker Prize can lead to a significant increase in sales, and foreign media outlets even use the term “Booker bounce.” Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian” sold 20,000 copies in Korea over the 10 years since its publication in 2007, but it sold over 500,000 copies in just two weeks after winning the Booker Prize in 2016. Currently, “The Vegetarian” has been translated and published in 40 languages, including Tamil, Nepali, and Urdu.
Translator Heo said that in order for more Korean works to be recognized overseas, it is important to expand support for translation. Only 10 to 20 Korean works are translated into English each year. He said that out of the 250 translated books he read as a judge for the 2021 National Translation Award, only 5 were Korean works. He emphasized that “in order to sell Korean literary works overseas, translators need to make their works stand out more.”
Translator Heo has translated Hwang Seok-yeong’s “Suin,” Kang Kyung-ae’s “Jihachon,” Baek Se-hee’s “I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki,” and BTS’ memoir “Beyond the Story” into English. His own English novel, “Toward Eternity,” was published in the United States on the 9th. He mentioned BTS’s leader RM (real name Kim Nam-joon) and praised him, saying, “If I ever meet RM, I want to bow deeply. Even readers overseas read books that RM recommends at least once. I think he might be the person who has contributed the most to Korean literature.”
Reporter Kim So-min [email protected]
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2024-07-30 21:58:57