The RAS Korean Literature Club discussion

.

The below is an excerpt from an October 2022 interview. This was a few months after the English-translation edition of I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki , translated by Anton Hur, was published in the UK (June 2022) and just before it was published in the US (November 2022).

The interviewer, Brandon J. Choi, asked Anton Hur about "Tteokpokki." (The year 2022 was Anton Hur's real break-through year as a translator. He has not lacked for exuberant self-confidence since then, if he ever did.)

Quote:

_____________

Brandon J. Choi: I recently finished your translation of Baek Sehee’s I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. Since you have translated across multiple genres and forms, was translating this memoir different in any way?

Anton Hur: I don’t think so. People always ask me how I choose the books I work on. The most important thing is the language. They have to be good writers. Translating good writing is easy. I have never talked to Baek Sehee but while I’m sure it was a very harrowing book to write, it was a very smooth book to translate because she is an excellent writer. Her honesty just vibrates off the page. I thought that as long as I could convey her feelings and insights as accurately as possible, then people would get the book.

Brandon J. Choi: I didn’t realize you had never met her. Do translators often work closely with their authors?

Anton Hur: For me, the norm is to not really know my authors. I get such a visceral feeling when I read their books. I understand what they’re saying and I don’t need the author to explain anything to me. A part of me doesn’t want to bother the author because if I were being asked questions about my work after I finished it, I would think, why is this not clear to you? For example, Kyung-Sook Shin is a god of Korean literature. She doesn’t need to explain herself. Everything is clear to me because I’ve been reading her for forever. (NOTE: Anton Hur's first translated literary-fiction novel was The Court Dancer by Kyung-Sook Shin: original 2007, English-translation edition August 2018. --PJ.) There are writers I am close to like Bora. We talk all the time but we never talk about work. We’re usually exchanging memes on our email thread. I did drag Bora out to a lot of press events though. We called it the Bora World Tour.

(End quote; from "Inside the Process of Translating Korean Literature: Anton Hur, Sandy Joosun Lee, and Sung Ryu on their path as literary translators, creative process, and book recommendations," Electric Lit, October 7, 2022.)

__________

---> Comment: Anton Hur said in the interview here that he had, quote, "never talked to" Baek Se-Hee, up through mid-October 2022. That's all through the process of translating her novel up to the point of final publication and for even a number of months after full public release in the original market (UK, June 2022 launch).

However, Baek Se-hee and her English translator Anton Hur did later meet. They did some book-events together. Anton Hur reposted some smiling shots from their joint events in his tribute to Baek Se-hee the day after her death in October 2025. Her death three years after this interview to the week.

.