Theorists of translation often focus on translation between European languages, but what issues arise when one translates between languages from radically different linguistic and cultural contexts? In this talk, Associate Professor Stephen Epstein of the Victoria University of Wellington will draw on several decades of experience as a translator of Korean and Indonesia fiction to illuminate how literary translation in such situations requires attention to a significantly different set of considerations. Epstein will offer examples from his own work to suggest some of the special features of translating from each language and will also discuss the controversy that arose in regard to Deborah Smith's translation of Han Kang's The Vegetarian, the winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.
Conference "Recent Images of North Korea in South Korean Popular Culture"
Friday, June 15, 14:30, sala de leitura informal da Biblioteca do ISCAP.
In recent years, South Korea has experienced significant changes in popular discourse about the North. Until the advent of the so-called "Sunshine Policy", Southern portraits of North Koreans had been largely monochromatic, treating counterparts across the 38th Parallel as evil Communists or brainwashed automatons. From the turn of the millennium, though, previously unimaginable depictions of North Korea and North Koreans emerged. In this talk, Stephen Epstein will discuss such striking recent trends in South Korean popular culture as films that feature North Korean spies as sympathetically treated protagonists and television shows that feature North Korean defectors in order to illuminate how South Korea collectively imagines its estranged sibling, a nation that is currently commanding the world’s attention.
Stephen Epstein (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
Associate Professor Stephen J Epstein is the Director of the Asian Languages & Cultures Programme at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and served as the 2013-14 President of the New Zealand Asian Studies Society. He has published widely on contemporary Korean society, literature and popular culture and translated numerous pieces of Korean and Indonesian fiction, including Who Ate Up All The Shinga? by Park Wan-suh (Columbia University Press, 2009), The Long Road by Kim In-suk (MerwinAsia, 2010), Telegram by Putu Wijaya (Lontar Foundation, 2011) and Apple and Knife by Intan Paramaditha (BrowBooks, 2018). Epstein has also published widely on contemporary Korean society, literature and popular culture has also co-produced two documentaries on the Korean indie music scene, Us & Them: Korean Indie Rock in a K-pop world (2014) and Our Nation: A Korean Punk Rock Community (2002). He is currently translating Intan Paramaditha's The Wandering: Choose Your Own Red Shoe Adventure, which will appear with Penguin Random House in 2020.
