Fiction Commendation Prize winner Adelle Wee Xing Min / Courtesy of Adelle Wee Xing Min
Among the many 5 winners of the 56th Trendy Korean Literature Translation Awards, Adelle Wee Xing Min stands out for her singular focus and dedication to literary translation.
A Singaporean scholar on the Literature Translation Institute of Korea’s (LTI Korea) Translation Academy in Seoul, Wee is an aspiring literary translator. Earlier than coming into the academy, she earned her grasp’s diploma in Korean-English translation from Ewha Womans College, following an undergraduate diploma in linguistics.
Her dream of changing into a literary translator started modestly via fan translation work within the Ok-pop neighborhood.
“I truly began out doing fansubs and translating social media posts for an idol group I actually favored,” Wee recalled.
“There have been solely a few fan translators as a result of the fan base was actually small, and followers must wait hours and typically days earlier than they may learn an correct English translation. So I began subtitling and translating their content material to attempt to shorten the wait time and bridge the hole between non-Korean-speaking followers and the idols they cherished a lot. I keep in mind staying up all evening subtitling their movies again when VLIVE was a factor, and I actually loved it. Then in the future, it hit me that it could be enjoyable to truly do translation for a dwelling, so I made a decision to start out studying it professionally.”
Cowl of sci-fi quick story assortment which incorporates Choi Hee-ra’s “Aeon” / Courtesy of Jaeum & Moeum Publishing
For the award, Wee translated “Aeon,” a science fiction quick story by novelist Choi Hee-ra.
She mentioned her alternative of textual content mirrored her personal curiosity about know-how like synthetic intelligence (AI) and its ethical implications.
“Ever since I discovered about self-driving vehicles, a tiny a part of my mind has at all times puzzled who or what could be guilty if it injures or kills a human being whereas driving on the street, or if it’s doable for somebody (or one thing) to even take full accountability for such accidents. I finally selected to translate this quick story as a result of it appeared to share my ideas and worries concerning AI and the development of know-how.”
Finishing the interpretation — and successful the award — reaffirmed her convictions concerning the irreplaceable worth of human creativity.
“I strongly consider that AI is as harmful as it’s handy, and that some jobs needs to be left to people,” she mentioned. “It’s ironic that I’m saying this as translation is without doubt one of the jobs that folks say is changing into redundant due to AI, however it’s essential to keep in mind that the human contact in literature isn’t one thing that may be simply replicated, and it could be an issue if we predict our creations are higher than we’re.”
Wee mentioned some of the tough features of her translation was the story’s title.
“Translating the title was positively some of the difficult features of translating this work. ‘Yeongwon’ means ‘without end’ in Korean, however it additionally sounds strange sufficient for native Korean audio system to only have a look at it and go ‘Oh, good identify,’ as a substitute of doing a double take as native English audio system may do if we see a reputation like ‘Without end’ or ‘Eternity’… I spent a really very long time simply looking for the correct option to translate the identify. I finally went with ‘Aeon,’ and I’m glad I exploit British English as a result of I favor this spelling over the American ‘Eon.’”
Having gained each the LTI Translation Award for Aspiring Translators final 12 months and a Trendy Korean Literature Translation Award this 12 months, Wee says she feels extra assured than ever about pursuing a profession in literary translation.
“My journey to date has been very thrilling,” she mentioned. “Profitable these awards has solely propelled me additional to pursue literary translation.”
