Korean Literature Books Haul

Once in a (long) while, really love a book haul to make myself happy! Although it comes with the usual post-haul guilt of having too many books unread, and the real dilemma of having even lesser bookshelf space compared to books.

I’ve been wanting to read more Korean literature for a while, and more importantly, I’m actually fascinated by literary translation. Which is why I’ve bought both the original Korean and English translated copies of the books. If I may be even more honest, I bought the books because of the translators. Anton Hur and Deborah Smith are my favourites so far, and I hope to get to read more works from excellent translators. I haven’t read much translated works to be able to form a reasonably well-informed opinion yet, but I feel like both their translated works read really smoothly.

The Court Dancer by Kung-sook Shin and translated by Anton Hur is now my most favourite translated work. Really. I love how Anton managed to transform and translate the long descriptive (and rather convoluted) sentences from Korean into poetic prose in English. It’s smooth and yet manages to contain the amount of detail in the original description. I find that very fascinating.

To me, translation is both a science and an art. It takes skill to be able to read in a foreign language, more so to capture that meaning and style in a different language. At this point, I’m stronger in terms of reading non-fiction and hence I still have a long way to go to improve reading literature.

To be honest, I’ve always harbour a secret desire to get into literary translation. Despite the fact that I’m way much stronger when reading non-fiction texts. hahaha well, one can always improve right? At this point in time, I’m not sure if I’m really suited for it. I think I might do better in terms of non-literary / non-fiction translation.

I’m reading 리진 ( the original version) now, and then trying my hand at translating parts of the prose. And found my version to be so woefully inadequate compared to Anton’s translations. But it’s a fun process. I hope to be able to become a stronger reader in time to come, and to challenge myself again.

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At times I feel like I’ve taken the fun out of blogging for myself. I find myself wondering if it’s easier for the readers to access if I write on social media platforms, and what kind of content I should put up in various channels. Come to think about it, I should first and foremost, write for myself. To enjoy putting my thoughts in words, instead of creating content for the sake of doing so (or for the views).

Perhaps that was why I stopped blogging for quite some time. It had somewhat lost that personal touch for me and became one of the things I have to tick-off in that never-ending to-do list. I had enough to-do lists at work, and hence the idea of having even more to do after work was not appealing to me (and I had no time). 2019 should be the year where I leave more time for myself, and things that matter to me.

Of course, if you guys are still around, would always appreciate a comment. 🙂