“I suspected learning a language would be both useful and enjoyable (I love memorising lists of things), and would get rid of the embarrassment of being monolingual at 21. I'd been obsessed with reading for as long as I could remember, the only thing I'd ever thought I might want to be was a writer, but I was much better at crafting sentences than at stringing plots together.” WantLongMightWould BeTogetherRememberReadingLanguageSentencesListsObsessedPlotEnjoyableEmbarrassmentLearning Language Author:Deborah Smith
“Alongside Han Kang, there's only one other author I've chosen to translate so far - Bae Suah. Her work is radical both stylistically and politically, influenced by her own translation practice (she's translated the likes of Kafka, Pessoa, and Sadeq Hedayat into Korean). Her language is simply extraordinary.” LanguagePracticeExtraordinaryLikesChosenRadicalTranslateTranslationsKoreanBae Author:Deborah Smith
“I first came across her [Bae Suah] when I read some elderly male critic castigating her for 'doing violence to the Korean language', which of course was catnip to me, especially as I'd recently discovered Lispector doing pretty much the same to Portuguese.” FirstsCoursesLanguageViolenceCriticsMalesElderlyKoreanPortugueseBae Author:Deborah Smith
“I've translated two of Bae's novels, A Greater Music and Recitation, which are coming from Open Letter and Deep Vellum in October and January respectively. A Greater Music is a semi-autobiographical book centred on a Korean writer moving to Berlin, learning to live and even write in a foreign language.” WritingTwoBookMovingLanguageNovelGreaterMusic IsLettersBerlinOctoberKoreanJanuaryForeign LanguageRecitationBae Author:Deborah Smith
“There's no linear narrative - the structure is more like a series of variations on a theme (how identity is shaped by language), with the past constantly bleeding into the present, dreams into reality. And the language, while incredibly lyrical in places, also has this underlying dissonance, the sense of it having itself been translated.” DreamRealityPastLanguageIdentityStructureSeriesNarrativeThemeVariationBleedingLinearLyricalDissonanceDream Reality Author:Deborah Smith
“I was in the second year of my PhD when I first had the idea - I'd recently started working as a translator, which meant firstly that I was hearing about amazing-sounding books from other translators, and also that I was getting enough of an insider's view of the publishing industry to be aware of all the implicit biases that made it so difficult for these books to ever get published, especially if they weren't from European languages (harder to discover, editors can't read the original, lack of funding programmes, authors who don't speak English).” IfsYearsFirstsMadeBookIdeasEnoughSpeakLanguageDifficultViewsIndustryHarderOriginalsHearingMade ItEditorsPublishingFundingProgrammesImplicitTranslatorsSpeak EnglishInsidersPhdsPublishing Industry Author:Deborah Smith
“So the aim for the press was a mixture of things: to publish under-represented writing, which is an intersection of original language, style, content, and often its author's gender. To publish it properly, in a way that makes it clear that this is art, not anthropology. To spotlight the importance of translation in making cultures less dully homogenous.” WayWritingArtCultureLanguageClearStyleImportanceOriginalsAimPressesGenderPublishMixturesTranslationsAnthropologySpotlightIntersections Author:Deborah Smith
