Deborah Smith FRSL (born 15 December 1987) is a British translator of Korean fiction. She translated The Vegetarian by Korean author Han Kang, for which she and the author were co-winners of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016. [1] [2]
After graduating from the University of Cambridge, [3] Smith began learning Korean in 2009, after discovering that there were few translations into English of Korean literature. [4] [5] In 2015, Smith founded Tilted Axis Press, a non-profit publishing house devoted to books that "might not otherwise make it into English." [6] She has been a research fellow at SOAS. [7]
In June 2018 Smith was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its "40 Under 40" initiative. [8]
In an article published in 2017, writer and academic Charse Yun (이화여대 교수) reported on criticisms in the Korean media of the English translation of The Vegetarian because of its omissions, embellishments, and mistranslations. After reading the translation against the original, Yun wonders,
Did the translation take things too far? One distinguished translator told me he felt the context and style were so different that it was more reasonable to speak of Smith’s work as an adaptation, not a translation.
While Yun calls the translation "a stunning achievement," he acknowledges that for some readers who are familiar with the original "the translation has deviated so far ... that the disparity strains their eyes and ruins their enjoyment." [9] Smith has defended her translation, stating
To say that my English translation of The Vegetarian is a “completely different book” from the Korean original is, of course, in one sense, entirely correct. Since there is no such thing as a truly literal translation — no two languages’ grammars match, their vocabularies diverge, even punctuation has a different weight — there can be no such thing as a translation that is not “creative.” And while most of us translators think of ourselves as “faithful,” definitions of faithfulness can differ. Because languages function differently, much of translation is about achieving a similar effect by different means; not only are difference, change, and interpretation completely normal, but they are in fact an integral part of faithfulness. [10]
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Han Kang is a South Korean writer. From 2007 to 2018, she taught creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. Han rose to international prominence for her novel The Vegetarian, which became the first Korean language novel to win the International Booker Prize for fiction in 2016. In 2024, she became the first South Korean writer and the first female Asian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Kang Hwagil is a South Korean writer and feminist who writes primarily about women, often using unreliable narrators. Her writing is influenced by gothic romance and thrillers written by women in the 19th century. She is a recipient of the Munhakdongne Young Writers’ Award (2017) and the Hankyoreh Literary Award (2017).
Sora Kim-Russell is a Korean American writer and translator from California, currently residing in Seoul. She received an MA in East Asian Studies from Stanford University and has translated a number of prominent Korean writers, including Hwang Sok-yong, Pyun Hye-young, and Jeon Sungtae. Her translations have appeared in outlets such as The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. Among other accolades, her translation of Hwang Sok-young's At Dusk (해질무렵) was longlisted for the 2019 International Booker Prize.
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Tilted Axis Press is a non-profit British publishing house specializing in the publication of contemporary Asian literature. Founded by Deborah Smith in 2015 following the success of her translation of Han Kang's The Vegetarian, the organization has gone on to publish 26 books and several chapbooks. Tilted Axis became known as the original translator and English language publisher of Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yu, which went on to receive critical acclaim as both a book and translation. Their profile rose higher in 2022, when Tomb of Sand, written by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell, won the International Booker Prize, marking the first novel written in Hindi to take the award.
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