Nadia Park
on translating Yun Dong-ju
The despair, loneliness, and simplicity of this poem were the most difficult aspects to translate. Without the same experiences, I will never be able to fully express the thoughts of Yun Dong-ju while writing this poem, as he was truly in pain at the time he was living in Japan, the another’s country. However, I did make some choices in an attempt to recreate his experience. For example, the line, “a room of six tatami mats in another’s country,” is a reference to Yun’s college years in university while in Japan, which colonized Korea during this time. The tatami mat is a classic material and style of flooring that Japan had and is very unique to that country and culture. Therefore, I wanted to keep this word first because there is no other word in English to describe it, and second, to include the history of the Japanese colonization of Korea. Additionally, the lines “For what / do I sink alone?” are shortened from the original lines, which literally state “I expect what / Just I, alone sinking?” These lines really drove home the pure feeling of being alone, and though I changed the literal translation, I wanted to maintain the simplicity and absolute emptiness throughout the poem. Again, the moments of nostalgia and of loneliness are so seamlessly connected and embedded in the original, which made producing the same feelings incredibly difficult.
about the author
Yun Dong-ju (윤동주) is a Korean poet who was born in 1917 In Myeongdong Village of Jilin in China and died in 1945 at the age of twenty-seven in Fukuoka, Japan. From 1910 to 1945, Korea was colonized by Japan and underwent “cultural cleansing,” which was enacted through a series of unfair and often violent methods. Korea people were prohibited to speak Korean, write in Korean, own Korean books, teach and learn in Korean, and hold their Korean names. It soon became dangerous for Yun to write in Korean, as it was interpreted by the Japanese to be a rebellion. Yun’s older cousin, Song Mongyu, was a huge influence in his life as well. As a talented prose writer and an activist in the Korean independence movement, Song himself worked with Yun and a few other college friends to create literary magazines back in Yeonhi University, which is now Yeonsae University. Song likely instilled in Yun the desire to refuse complete submission from the Japanese rule by continuing to write the Korean poetry he loved so much. Upon completing his education there, he moved to Rikkyo University in Tokyo and then transferred six months later to Doshisha University in Kyoto, where he was soon taken captive by the Japanese police to Fukushima prison, where he died, most likely as a victim of medical experiments. Yun never was able to publish his collection of poems, Star, Sky, Wind, and Poetry, because he was arrested as a revolutionary activist, but because he had given them to a close friend in Korea, Chong Pyong-uk, to hide until it was able to be published, Yun’s poems exist today for many to read.
about the translator
Nadia Park is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania studying communication and minoring in consumer psychology and French. She came into the world of translation first through being born into a Korean immigrant family and then later translated Japanese manga and anime. In her free time, she loves to make coffee, bake, and travel the world.
