Translating THE AGE OF DOUBT

This online event brought together six of the translators who worked on The Age of Doubt (Honford Star, 2022), a recently-published collection of stories by the formidable Korean author Pak Kyongni (박경리, 1926-2008). As a truly global group of writers tasked with working to bring one Korean author’s fiction into English, their insights into their process and experiences of translating for this book provided a window onto current practices, concerns, challenges and joys in the field of Korean to English literary translation.    

 

The speakers were joined by three discussants from the University of Toronto community.

 

 

Published in September 2022, The Age of Doubt includes seven stories by Pak Kyongni written between 1955 and 1968, which marks the period from her literary debut to the publication of the first volume of her epic magnum opus, Toji (1969-1994). The book also includes a commentary, written by Kang Ji Hee, on Pak Kyongni’s life and work with a focus on the stories in the collection. Honford Star are UK-based publishers of classic and contemporary literature from East Asia. This year one of their titles, Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny in translation by Anton Hur (one of our speakers!), was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. True to their mission of working with talented translators and exciting local artists, The Age of Doubt showcases work by eight different translators and cover illustration by Sanho @sanhomaydraw.   

 

 

You Jeong Kim is a translator and editor based in Seoul. She won the commendation prize of the 47th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards in 2016. She's also a graduate of LTI Korea Translation Academy Special and Regular Courses. She mainly translates/edits literary and media content including children's stories, scenarios, pansori, and subtitles.  

Paige Aniyah Morris is a writer and translator from Jersey City, New Jersey. She holds Bas in Ethnic Studies and Literary Arts from Brown University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Newark. The recipient of awards from the Daesan Foundation, the American Literary Translators Association, and the Fulbright Program, her translations from Korean have appeared in Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture, Samovar, The Georgia Review, and more.  

 

Dasom Yang is a writer and translator from Korea living in Berlin. Her translation of Pak Kyongni's short story "The Age of Darkness" appears in The Age of Doubt (Honford Star, 2022). She is working on a book of essays on love, language, migration and memory. Read more about her work here: http://dasomyang.com.   

 

Anton Hur was double-longlisted and shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize for his work as a literary translator. A graduate of Korea University College of Law and Seoul National University Graduate School, he currently divides his time between Seoul and Songdo. He will publish a book on translation in Korea in 2023.

Mattho Mandersloot is an Amsterdam-born literary translator, currently based in Jacksonville, Florida. A former full-time taekwondo athlete, he studied Classics (BA), Translation (MA) and Korean Studies (MSt) in London and Oxford. He translates from Korean into English as well as Dutch and his translations include works by bestselling authors such as Sun-mi Hwang and Sang Young Park.  

 

Sophie Bowman is a PhD student at the University of Toronto, researching post-war Korean fiction by women authors. Her translations include Kim Bo-Young’s I’m Waiting for You: And Other Stories (co-translated with Sung Ryu) and Heena Baek’s Magic Candies (Amazon Crossing Kids). Her short story translations have appeared in Future Science Fiction, Guernica, Clarkesworld and more.   

 

Aliju Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation examines Decadence as an aesthetic mode in literary narratives that relate to discourses of modernity and modernization, empire, and capitalist expansion. Her other interests include memory, space-time, and family sagas.

 

Jessica Morgan-Brown is a third-year doctoral student in East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Her current research involves an interdisciplinary approach to vernacularization movements in colonial Korea, with a focus on erasures of gender, race, and class inherent in dominant Hangeul narratives.   

 

Emily Wong is a first-year Master of Information student at the University of Toronto with a concentration in UX-Design. She did her undergraduate studies at the University of Hong Kong majoring in English and Korean Studies. Her training in literary analysis during her days at university made her realise the significance of literature and she started to appreciate the way it both shapes and is shaped by the socio-historical context of the time it is being written.  Organized by the Centre for the Study of Korea. Co-sponsored by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, and the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto.