Sofie to Korea

I just spent an entire week having the most fun I’ve had in years! I’m sure you all know from that statement alone that I must have been participating in the BCLT summer school for literary translation.

I have recently signed a translation contract with Danish publisher Korridor and have started translating the Korean novel 대도시의 사랑법 by Sang Young Park into Danish. The English version Love in the big City has been translated by my amazing friend Anton Hur, who was leading the Korean strand at the summer school.

The summer school took place at the University of East Anglia in the UK from July 23–29 and gathered the most inspiring translators and authors from around the world. My head is still spinning from talking to all these cool people who each had their own interesting story of how they became literary translators. I had always thought that my background in economics was unusual in this setting and perhaps even a disadvantage, so it was such a tremendous inspiration to meet people from all walks of life who were doing the same as myself.

Although I’m new to literary translation, I have quickly realized that as amazing as the job can be, it can also be a bit lonely at times. Attending this workshop has allowed me to connect with so many lovely translators and I feel I’ve made a couple of really good friends as well. Too bad they live so far away.

Anton did a wonderful job teaching the workshop. He’s so talented and inspiring and freaking hilarious. It didn’t feel like school in the traditional sense but more like a group of people having interesting discussions about literary translation, and about how the translator often serves as a problem solver. We also had a lot of fun exploring how different word choices convey different vibes.

If you’re among my ARMY readers, you may recognize Anton Hur as one of the co-translators of the BTS book Beyond the Story. Anton did the incredible and almost impossible job of translating the Korean book into English in just a month with co-translators Clare Richards and Slin Jung who were both among my cool teammates in the Korean strand. The three of them gave an interesting panel talk on their translation project in the iconic Dragon Hall in downtown Norwich.

In the Korean strand (the workshop also covered Arabic, French, Japanese, Mandarin, and multilingual prose/poetry) we were so lucky to have Sang Young Park participate as our author-in-residence. I have enjoyed reading his novels and essays and it was such a pleasure to get to know him in person. He’s just the kindest, funniest person, and I’m honored to be his Danish translator.

During the week, aside from working with our source languages, we also had a couple of sessions where we got to experiment with creative writing. I was lucky to be placed in groups taught by Nick Bradley, a British author and translator from Japanese, and Moniza Alvi, a Pakistani-British poet and writer. Both were so engaging and inspiring and managed to make the elusive concept of creative writing seem far less daunting with their hands-on exercises.

While I was at UEA, I stayed in the on-site dorm. Staying in a dorm room for the first time in a long while was incredibly fun. I really enjoyed this return to student life just for a week and the campus was absolutely gorgeous. All the buildings were surrounded by beautiful nature and wild bunnies were running freely all over.

Since pictures say more than a thousand words, I’ll let you see for yourself what a blast we had all week:

I’m sure I’ll remember this workshop for the rest of my life. Not only did I learn (and laugh) a lot, but I also met so many awesome people, and I’m convinced that we will continue to be of great support and inspiration to one another as we continue our journey into the field of literary translation.

Cheers to the 2023 cohort of the BCLT summer school and to all those brilliant people who made it happen. 진심으로 감사합니다~