This year’s Korean Literature Translation Awards went to French, Spanish, Italian and Vietnamese translations of Korean novels, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea announced Wednesday.
“This year, the European-language translations excelled in quality, were released through prominent local publishers, and received praise from the local media,” said poet and head of the awards panel Moon Jung-hee in a statement on the reasons behind the selection.
Three out of the four recipients were European-language translations, and all four selected works were translations of novels.
On the dominance of novels, Moon said: “Two works of poetry translation made it to the finals, but they were unfortunately dropped due to various factors.”
This year’s winners are Lee Tae-yeon and the late Genevieve Roux-Faucard, who co-translated Han Kang’s “Breath Fighting” into French (“Pars, le vent se leve”); Kwon Eun-hee and Sung Cho-rim, who co-translated Bae Soo-ah’s “Sunday Sukiyaki Restaurant” into Spanish (“El Restaurante de Sukiyaki”); Andrea De Benedittis, who translated Kim Young-ha’s “I Have a Right to Destroy Myself” into Italian (“Ho Il Diritto di Distruggermi”); and Vu Kim Ngan, who translated Jeong Yu-jeong’s “Seven Years of Darkness” into Vietnamese (“7 nam bong toi”).
Lee Tae-yeon (center), who won for her co-translation of Han Kang's novel "Breath Fighting" into French ("Pars, le vent se leve" Descrescenzo Editeurs, 2014) (Literature Translation Institute of Korea)
Kwon Eun-hee (left) and Sung Cho-rim (center), who won for their translation of Bae Suah's novel "Sunday Sukiyaki Restaurant" into Spanish ("El Restaurante de Sukiyaki" Bajo La Luna, 2014) (Literature Translation Institute of Korea)
Andrea De Benedittis (center), who won for his translation of Kim Young-ha's novel "I Have a Right to Destroy Myself" into Italian ("Ho Il Diritto di Distruggermi" Metropoli d'Asia, 2014) (Literature Translation Institute of Korea)
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