[57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards] Poetry Commendation Award winner Park Se-yeon
For Park Se-yeon, translating poetry meant reading the same lines perhaps a hundred times — and finding that they still had the power to move her. Working on poems by An Hee-yeon, the Korean-English translator and English instructor read aloud, listened to recordings and repeatedly revised her English versions. Familiarity did not diminish their emotional force. “I never grew tired of them.…
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Park Se-yeon, an esteemed Korean-English translator and English instructor, has been awarded the Poetry Commendation Award for her exceptional translations of poetry at the 57th Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards. Her passion for translating poetry lies in the emotional impact it has on her, with familiar lines still evoking strong feelings after multiple readings.
Park carefully crafted English versions of poems by An Hee-yeon, a Korean poet, through repeated revisions and experimentation. She was particularly drawn to An Hee-yeon's ability to observe human vulnerability without judgment or sentimentality, and her aim was to convey the same warmth, courage, and honesty to English-speaking readers.
Park's translations capture the poet's vivid, unexpected imagery and the unsettling emotions it evokes, leaving readers with a deep sense of tenderness and connection to the human experience.
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