According to experts contacted by ČTK, the South Korean Han Kang, who became famous above all for her book Vegetarian, deserved the Nobel Prize for literature. Its worldwide success was brought about by the first translation into English, which, according to translator Viktor Janiš, contains significant errors, and although it reads nicely, according to him, it would not hold up in the Czech Republic.
According to Janiš, the English translation of The Vegetarian by Deborah Smith obscures Han Kang’s distinctive linguistic minimalism. “It is expressed sparingly and very matter-of-factly, which the English translation hides. On the contrary, it is superficially nice and polished, it is a certain English idea of how one should write. The Czech translation is more concise and more similar to the original,” says Janiš.
Han Kang won the Man Booker Prize for her book The Vegetarian. The book was then published in the Czech Republic as her first work. Later, her newer works such as Where the Grass Blooms and the White Book were also translated in the Czech Republic. Her latest novel, I Don’t Say Goodbye Forever, is currently in print.
“Her more recent books have a certain mix of introspection, autobiographical features, and at the same time, two of them deal with some historical events from South Korea’s modern history and its reverberations today,” said translator of the Han Kang books, Petra Ben-Ari.
As an example, Ben-Ari cited how the novel Where the Grass Blooms describes the narrative of the Gwangju massacre in 1980, when the dictator at the time came to power, the demonstrations were suppressed in a very bloody manner and a large number of civilians were killed.
“She felt a certain debt that those events were not sufficiently reflected and used the opportunity as a world-famous author to deal with these topics honestly. The second reason why she began to reflect historical events in her work is probably also the then and current Korean situation, where in the daughter of the aforementioned dictator was elected president in democratic elections,” said Ben-Ari.
Ben-Ari believes that the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Han Kang is crucial for South Korean literature, and not only for it, but also for the whole of Asian literature. “At the same time, her works convey a kind of reflection for us, for example, in the approach to Asian politics and how the West played a role in that,” she said.
Han Kang is a South Korean author who comes from a family of writers. She studied Korean literature, started with poetry and short stories, and later turned to novels. Her new novel I will not say goodbye forever will be published by Odeon after the New Year.
The Swedish Academy praised Han Kang’s “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and reveals the fragility of life”. Han Kang’s work is characterized by revealing the relationship between mental and physical suffering and has a close connection to Eastern thought.
Source: www.tyden.cz
