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영어

This essay aims to analyze and critique Deborah Smith’s translation of Human Acts, written by Han Kang. In the novel, Kang embodies and harmonizes polyphonic and poetic voices of the souls of the dead as well as the living who suffered from trauma inflicted by atrocious military oppression during the 5.18 Gwangju Uprising. Smith is aware of the precariousness of the translation not only because Human Acts is full of poetic and untranslatable prose, but also because it deals with a historic moment in Korea about which there has been persistent contention and misinformation. Still, rather than going through the difficulties of faithfully translating the original, Smith decided to remove significant portions of the original and modified it by deleting sentences or translating differently from the original. Rather than merely criticizing Smith’s translation or analyzing it in light of translation studies, this essay philosophically probes into core issues of translation per se, utilizing Walter Benjamin’s ontological approach to translation and Jacque Derrida’s deconstruction of translation. In turn, this essay furthers its critique on the cultural and political connotation of Smith’s translations with examples.