The RAS Korean Literature Club discussion

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H., one of the members of the Korean Literature Club, directed our attention yesterday (via a KakaoTalk group-message) to a recent essay by British literary critic Tim Parks.

Tim Parks has been writing for years about the concepts of Global Literature, literary translation, a "globalized"/"globalizing" cultural milieu in the early-21st century, and how these things interact; the problems or challenges associated with them. (See his classic essay "The Dull New Global Novel," New York Review of Books, February 2010.)

Along comes the shock of the Nobel Prize in Literature, going to a relatively obscure, young (for the prize) Asian woman from a previously-never-awarded nationality: Han Kang.

In his recent Harper's Magazine essay, Tim Parks has himself and a Bulgarian interlocutor in conversation in which aspersions are cast on the merit of Han Kang being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (October 2024). But he especially focuses on the Vegetarian controversy.

The Vegetarian won the International Booker Prize in 2016, more-or-less out of nowhere. Tim Parks' conversation with this Bulgarian translator might apply to the International Booker and its 2016 judges, more properly than to the Nobel of 2024. Both deal with translation, globalization, and pushes towards national literatures getting international recognition (and international awards).

The discussion is useful to Tim Parks not because he is interested in Han Kang per se, but because it points towards a phenomenon he's chewed over for years. His criticisms hang like a cloud over the entire genre (if one can call it that) of Korean-to-English translated fiction.

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Before quoting the relevant few-hundred words from his essay, let me say this: the critic in question is surnamed "Parks," with an "s" on the end. His name is unconnected to the Korean "Park" (or Pak) surname. Tim Parks is a White-European. I stress the point because I think his non-Koreanness (and Europeanness) is useful to be aware of when engaging with the following commentary. He has good knowledge of non-English literature(s), but it is mainly European, especially Italy.

Mr. Parks knows so little about Korea(n literature) that he joins the ranks of those who "get Han Kang's name wrong": the family-name is "Han"; but he calls her "Kang," which is a more-common family-name than Han but here is actually the given-name. He consistently calls other figures in the essay (living and dead) by their family-name only -- except Han Kang, obviously inadvertently.

Here is a portion of the Time Parks essay, in which he builds up his point and then recounts his conversation about Han Kang:

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Excerpt from "Sleepless in Sofia," by Tim Parks, Harper's Magazine, May 2025

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/05/s...

(quote)

[On a Bulgarian talk-show, ca. March or April 2025, the host asks:] “Mr. Parks, you’re English, but you’ve lived many years in Italy, you write for American journals, you translate, you know the international scene. Tell me, how can our Bulgarian literature survive in an English-speaking world?” I’m thrown. Does a country’s literature rely on international circulation to thrive? Do they suppose I can tell them how to get a Bulgarian author nominated for the Nobel? Maybe, I suggest, writers should just tell the stories they feel moved to tell and that Bulgarians are excited to read.

But this clearly doesn’t cut it. [...]

[....]

The Italian Anglophile Giuseppe Baretti...undermine[d] the whole idea of world literature, even before Goethe pronounced in its favor in 1827. Voltaire’s notion of a universally applicable taste, Baretti thought, was simply French taste applied to cultures with quite different mindsets: a form of imperialism. Even if Voltaire had had better English, Shakespeare wouldn’t come across in French. Different countries had different tastes and always would.

Shakespeare’s English was so dense and brilliant that the only way to appreciate him was to learn English. “Yes, my French messieurs, to know Shakespeare you’ll have to come to London.” In this view, literature is predicated on belonging; it requires you to be part of a community. You can’t decide who wins between Shakespeare and Corneille, because there is no common measure of artistic achievement. Literature is not a playing field, let alone a battlefield. You can’t expect to appreciate the literary achievements of every nation in the same way.

The following evening, somewhat weary, I go to my main festival event, a conversation with Daria Karapetkova, a prominent Bulgarian translator and professor of literature. The crowd is encouragingly numerous and attentive. Later I discover that many of them are Karapetkova’s students, aspiring writers and translators. She asks me about the Nobel, recently won by Han Kang. Was it simply time to give the prize to a Korean? I say that all I know about Kang came from writing about her novel The Vegetarian and discovering, after feedback from Korean critics, that the English translation departed in very many ways from the original. The translator, Deborah Smith, had declared that “ ‘faithfulness’ is an outmoded, misleading, and unhelpful concept.” When the prestigious Italian publishers Adelphi Edizioni, having read the book in English, had it translated into Italian from the Korean, they rejected that version and, to get the book they thought they had acquired, had it translated from the English.

“Perhaps they should have given the Nobel to the translator,” Karapetkova teases. Why not? Translators are eager for visibility, too. They like to insist a translation is an original work in its own right. However, I point out, we don’t know which translation the Swedish judges read. The French version, for example, which I dipped into, is quite different. Perhaps in the end world literature gives us the version of the world that suits us—that we can feel knowledgeable for having consumed.

“What advice,” Karapetkova asks, because it’s the inevitable closing question, “would you give to Bulgarian writers?”

I would love simply to shake my head. But they’ve paid to bring me here. “Write to the community you live and move in,” I say. “That’s where the reading experience will be most intense. If your compatriots are enthusiastic, sooner or later someone will translate you, since the modern globalized individual cannot accept the idea that there is something excellent out there that they don’t have access to, or can’t turn into money, or measure against the other excellent things they already have, so as to hand out a prize. Even if translation is impossible, they will translate.”

In the audience a hand goes up. A young man says he is translating a thriller that is not very good. Should he improve it?

“That’s your call,” I tell him, glad of the chance to mention the curious case of the Iranian translator Zabihollah Mansouri, who, from the Twenties to the Eighties, claimed to have translated fourteen hundred books, including many of literature’s great masterpieces, systematically “improving” them with his own additions and reflections to suit an Iranian public. “He became very popular.”

(end quote from "Sleepless in Sofia," by Tim Parks, Harper's Magazine, May 2025)

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/05/s...

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On translated literature and translated-literature prizes:

"The fact that you enjoy a foreign novel in English does not necessarily mean it was well translated." -- Tim Parks

from: https://tinyurl.com/sfay74u7

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See full article here:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...