a conversation on translation, history, and feminism

a conversation on translation, history, and feminism

Interview conducted by Yuxin (Vivian) Wen and Rhosean Asmah

DS: We’re really excited to have your translations of Yi Sang-hwa’s poems in this issue! Can you share with us when you first began translating from Korean into English, and specifically, when you began translating Yi Sang-hwa?

EY: So first of all, Yi Sang-hwa’s name is generally well-known in Korea. If you went through the Korean education system, you’d know he was one of the writers fighting for independence during the colonial period under Japanese rule. But, most people only know him for one poem that he wrote, which roughly translates to “Does Spring Come to These Stolen Fields?” It’s a famous long lyric poem.

When I was thinking of people that I could translate, frankly, there was the issue of copyright. So I wanted to first start with people whose works were in the public domain. I began focusing on the colonial period. I looked up more of Yi Sang-hwa’s works, which was a way of engaging with him further and getting to know him more. Because, as you know, as translators translating someone else’s work, knowing the context is very important. It’s more than just yanking someone’s words into another language, and then just walking away with it in order to really have a good translation. Ideally, you need to have some kind of spiritual communication with the poet. And I think that comes a lot in the form of contextual research. So the translation process was again, a way of getting to know the poet better. In the end, I learned a lot about Yi Sang-hwa.

After that, I grew more interested in reading women’s poetry because I was thinking Where are the women poets in translation? Were there women poets from the colonial period? Those questions were helpful for my personal development as a writer, as a researcher, and as a translator.

DS: Can you talk more about the experience of translating Yi Sang-hwa?

EY: It was a long time ago when I was translating Yi Sang-hwa. But even then, first and foremost, I thought of myself as a poet. It was important for me to strike a balance between being true to what the person actually wrote and using more elevated language to make the translations stand on their own in the English language. That’s probably what was running through my head. I’m not a big fan of embellishing or adding too much to the original text, especially for writers whose language and whose works have not been translated much before. It is important to produce a more “direct” translation in my opinion. And then afterwards, many different versions can speak more. I hate the word “faithful” when it comes to translation. It feels so gendered. But for the lack of a better word at this moment, I wanted it to be “faithful.” It’s a delicate balance especially when you’re translating from a language that is so vastly different from the target language. It’s up to you to decide where this person’s work stands in the world, in the field of translation and literary studies, in front of the Anglophone audience.

DS: That’s a great answer and it raised a lot of questions about the politics of language, about the connection between the poet and the translator, and specifically, about translating a poet and language less known to the English world. Can you share more about your process of translating the women poets? What things do you tend to focus on or prioritize?

EY: Let me first clarify that when I say “direct” translation, it still contains choice. I guess my general approach still is to translate as “directly” as possible, and then smooth over the sounds through various revisions. I try to see if I can replicate the Korean literary device in the English language. It’s not always immediately possible when I’m doing a direct translation instead of a loose, more emotion-based one. The translation has to come in various drafts: it helps to make several versions and then see what was lost and what was gained from each version and try to somehow mediate between them. So, you come up with a more polished version that retains the inherent strangeness of translation and translated language, while still sounding like a poem that stands on its own in the translated language. There isn’t really a formula for this. Really, all I can say is compare your different drafts. Get creative with certain things as long as you can judge that they really deliver a quality that’s important to the poem in your assessment.

For example, in a Korean original, if I think repetition is important but somehow it doesn’t sound the same in the English translation, I try to see how I can bring up the repeated nature of the language using another literary device. Maybe it would be repetition of certain sounds and consonants, for example. I think in that way, you can be a little expansive in your strategies, as long as it doesn’t dilute something that you think is significant.

DS: Our next question is a slight shift from the general process of translation to your anthology, Against Healing. In the collection, you translated a variety of contemporary female poets and writers. Are there any of them you’d like to highlight?

EY: First of all, personally, I liked those poems. And secondly, I was thinking about how so many of these poets perished from the real world and also the literary world, and thinking about all the themes of illness and pain in their works as well. Reading these poets really prompted me to think about the literary history of Korea and how there have been multiple levels of silencing and erasure of women poets. What were the institutional conditions that made them turn to poetry, or use poetry as a medium to really express this kind of the suffering they were going through? So there wasn’t really one person that sticks out to me as more important than the others. They and their homes all have different meanings to me. But as a collective, they did make me question how Korea and its literary sphere has treated women writers. And I think their poems are all sort of mirrors to the situations that they were put in.

I said all of that to mean that when you’re translating someone, you’re not just translating the language. You’re really getting involved in knowing the paratextual elements that created these poems. You’re getting to know the history. You’re getting to know the politics. When you’re doing colonial period poetry, for example, you’re thinking about how censorship could have influenced the writing of these poems and what’s in between the lines. So in a way, you’re becoming an analyst, like a translation is a form of analysis.

DS: Yes, translation is never only about language. To translate is to think about literature and what literature encodes and reveals. Going back to Against Healing, did you get to work with any of the living authors and did you get to share your translation with any of them?

EY: I am in touch with Kim Hyesoon. I’m actually cotranslating with my husband. Most recently, I translated a suite of poems that she wrote for the Busan Biennale. And I showed her my translations as well. Also, because I’m using some of her poems for my dissertation, I reached out to her about some interpretative decisions. I wanted to know what intentions she had when she wrote them in Korean, even though, of course, authorial intention only goes so far. You shouldn’t solely rely on what they meant in your analysis and translation.

Other than that, I haven’t really been in touch with the women that I translated. Kim Yideum, she’s a poet in Against Healing. We follow each other on social media, but we’ve never spoken to each other. [Laughs.]

DS: In your translator’s note to Against Healing, you mentioned that although not all of the women may identify themselves as feminist, in your reading of their works, you see them as feminist. Also, the word “feminist” has gained so much resonance and baggage over the years. Considering all of this, we were wondering two things. How would you describe your relationship with feminism? Do you call yourself a feminist?

EY: Yeah, well i definitely identify as feminist. I think in order to be a decent human being everyone should. But I think in Korea there has been hesitancy about the term in the popular imagination because a lot of people do have misconceptions about its meaning. That’s not to say that there isn’t any feminist criticism in Korea. The word is being used widely. I just think that the general public has to have more self-education on what it really means. Because of that, I think women writers have been more hesitant in embracing that word to describe themselves. It’s a little different now that Me Too and a feminist boom in korea has happened in the past few years. Now, I think younger people and writers are more aware of feminist criticism and what feminism means.

However, I also think that we have to dismantle our own notions of Western feminism when we look at conversations happening in Korea. If we use the West as the standard, or as something to strive toward, then every other country not in the West is seen as the same. But, everyone’s timeline is different. The issues at hand are different. This isn’t to say that I think it’s okay Koreans are not talking about trans rights, for instance, but I think that that’s the phase Korean feminism is in right now. It’s incorrect to use the Western angle to critique it as being belated or somehow less advanced.

DS: We agree. That’s an important clarification to make. Going back more directly to the subject of translation, we’re also interested in how it relates to liminality. How does your experience as a translator mediate your relationships between different cultures and places?

EY: When I’m thinking about something as a bilingual person, there are, of course, things that only exist in Korean or in English. Or, when I react to something in Korean then think about how I’d react to it in English, I feel like I have different personalities. When I realize these differences, I want to exercise them through poetry. So, I might notice that there are a lot of onomatopoeias in Korean, and it makes me more sensitive to the sounds that I use in my English poetry. Or, maybe there are idioms in English that don’t exist in Korean, and then I try to find something with the same meaning. But then the imagery is totally different. All of this, I think, sharpens my observational skills, which feed into my writing.

Even when I’m writing my original poetry, I sometimes I feel that I have to translate my culture or do a cultural translation of something, or that I just need to translate myself. So then, what does it feel like to translate the emotional information? And what can I do with it on the level of language? These are all just challenges that you and I have to face as writers and translators.

DS: What advice would you offer to young translators who are just beginning to translate poems?

EY: I think that it is important to have at least one trusted reader of your work. When you’re revising and revising and revising, it’s really easy to get lost in your own thoughts. You’re so close to the work that you can’t really see it. So, you need someone who will look at it from a distance and be genuine with you about what’s working and what’s not. I have one friend that I send all my drafts to, and I know they’re going to be honest. I know they’re going to help me with edits or make suggestions. Even if I don’t take any, it still helps me think. For example, say my friend told me to change something, but I find I don’t want to. Maybe it means that the line is really important to me, that it’s somehow key to the emotional chord of the poem, but that it’s not coming across in the right way. So, perhaps I need to revisit the line and do something different around it. This applies for translation, too. Maybe you have a friend who speaks the same languages you do. And maybe they can tell you if you stray too far from what the author said or that the translation is not lyrical enough, all of those things. So, really, just try to keep that community of the two people going. That takes work, though — I don’t take that friend for granted.

DS: We’d like to end the interview by addressing the situation we’re all in now. Specifically, this interview is taking place virtually because we are in the midst of a pandemic and self-isolating in our respective locations. Could you speak about this experience and whether you have witnessed or felt questions of translation because of this sense of isolation?

EY: It’s interesting because for people in the literary world, our careers are often described as solitary or lonely. But, translation is inherently a conversation with somebody else, who might be in conversation with somebody else. There is a whole community contained in the process of translation. So, I feel that translation is an ultimately un-lonely enterprise.

I’ve translated a bit during quarantine, and sometimes I just had to say Kim Hyesoon, what are you talking about? I looked up her words, and her other words, and really tried to get in her mind. I didn’t feel alone at all. In a way, it actually felt like I had too many engagements in my head at that moment. Of course, I understand when people say that writing or reading is kind of an isolating practice. But I never feel that way because I’ve always seen both practices as being a very rigorous communication with and analysis of other people who came before you, who wrote this before you could even imagine it.