[KS] copyright and other translation matters

[Marion Eggert]

Dear Brother Anthony,

as nobody else seems to bite the bait: I would support the attitude of
the KLTI in this matter. Law may be on the side of the publishers, but
to claim on one hand that there's no money to be made with Korean
literature and ask for full printing costs, and on the other hand treat
the copyrights as if they had market value seems illogical and unfair to
me.

On the other hand, it may be asked whether the pocket-book policy of the
KLTI makes sense, at least for languages other than English. Talking to
a German publisher of Korean literature these days, I heard him complain
that the KLTI plans a series of very thin, around 40-50 pages booklets
of single stories in German translation. His take was that the German
market can't absorb such a flood of titles.
Also, he expressed a sense of frustration, which I deeply share with
him, over the KLTI's policy of producing as much as possible in
preferably no time. The result is that we (Germans) are flooded recently
with bad to very bad translations of Korean literature, and all those
people outside the narrow Korea scene who have chanced, for whatever
reason, to leaf through some of these books have turned away in
disinterest.
Typically, the translators are Korean graduates of a German unversity
program, lets say in pedagogy, who returned to Korea, found no job and
then turned to translation of literature for some financial support.
They easily find a German engineer who is ready to correct the German
version for them. Then they write an afterword, scratching together the
remainders of their school education in Korean literature. As a result,
the German reader learns, e.g., that Han Yongun was the one to destroy
the rigid (!) sijo form and write free verse for the first time.
To be fair, the recent list of translation projects/ translaters
supported by the KLTI sounds VERY reasonable to me, and perhaps things
are just on the verge of turning better. But if you have the ear of the
KLTI, please let them know that preventing bad books is just as
important as producing good ones!
I'm aware the situation is much better for the English language, but
would be interested in experiences from other language communities.
Regards,
Marion