Since the Tower of Babel, humans have needed interpreters and translators to communicate across nations. Due to cultural differences, however, misunderstandings often arise, and sometimes things are inevitably lost in translation. That is why there is a saying that “every translator is a traitor.” 

A host of writers have contemplated and written about the innate problems of translation. For example, Yevgeny Yevtushenko humorously wrote, “Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.” Robert Frost commented, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”

And Samuel Johnson joined Frost by arguing, “Poetry cannot be translated. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.” According to Samuel Johnson, we should read poetry in its original language, not in translation. The problem is that not many are willing to learn a new language to read poetry.

George Borrow has also disparaged translation, writing, “Translation is at best an echo.” Virginia Woolf also lamented the difficulty of rendering humor in a foreign language: “Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign language.” Indeed, translating humor into another language is extremely difficult and tricky, because the sense of humor varies from one culture to another.

At the same time, however, other intellectuals acknowledge the importance of translation. For example, Jose Saramago once wrote, “Writers make national literature, while translators make universal literature.” As Paul Auster put it, “Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world.” Anthony Burgess, too, once said, “Translation is not a matter of words only; it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.”

Simply reading a translation and fully understanding the cultural milieu of a literary work are two different things. Sometimes, therefore, even a literary text that has been faithfully translated may be interpreted differently by foreigners. Professor Charles Montgomery recently told me that in his class, American students interpret Korean literature quite differently due to cultural differences.

For example, Korean students read Hwang Sun-won’s “Rain Shower” as a heart-rending story of pure, platonic love between two innocent young lovers. A country boy secretly admires a girl from Seoul. The boy first meets the girl who plays by the stream. She gives him a clam and asks if he knows the name of the shell. One day, when they are out in the field, they encounter a rain shower. They find a deserted cottage and stay there until the shower stops. Later in the cottage, they find her sweater is stained with grass. Soon after the incident, the girl abruptly dies and it is revealed she asked her parents to bury her sweater with her body. Korean readers naturally assume that she dies of a severe cold or pneumonia caused by the rain shower.

No Koreans would think, however, that the two children had a sexual relationship. American students, however, read the story quite differently. They often hypothesize that the two young lovers have sex at the cottage and the girl dies while undergoing an abortion. In American eyes, there are abundant sexual implications in the story: the stream, the clam, the showers, and the girl’s sweater stained with grass. Koreans may frown at the alternative interpretation because it ruins the purity of the tragic love story. But American students may respond, “Come on! Be realistic!”

Professor Montgomery also told me that Yi Hyo-sok’s “The Buckwheat Season” is also interpreted quite differently by his students. Yi’s story is about a pockmarked man who by chance spends a night with the prettiest woman in town in a watermill under the full moon. And the woman becomes momentarily sentimental and softened because she is about to leave the town forever as her father is bankrupt. Later, the man learns that the woman is raising a child, who is presumably his son, and he wanders around the country as a traveling salesman looking for his son.

Korean readers may interpret Yi’s piece as a story of the circle of life. Indeed, many symbols within the story depict the circle of life: the full moon, the watermill, and the buckwheat flowers. Furthermore, the man is a traveling salesman who is constantly circling around the country selling goods and searching for his son at the same time.

On the contrary, according to Professor Montgomery, American students assume the protagonist attacked the beautiful woman because he is a traveling salesman with a pockmarked face. Perhaps this is because in American literature, villains are often depicted with pockmarks and other unattractive attributes.

When we translate a text, therefore, we should always bear in mind cultural differences. Instead of word-by-word translation, we need “cultural translation.” Only then can we avoid the mischaracterization of a text.

By Kim Seong-kon

Kim Seong-kon is a professor of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ―Ed.