In 2018, I launched this blog with my first ever review: I wrote about Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith, published by the now shuttered imprint Portobello Books. Reading The Vegetarian was the catalyst for the Translating Women project, and part of a personal story I’ve told in a range of talks and interviews over the years. I remember writing that first review – I’d never done anything like it before, had no clue if I was pitching it right or even writing it well, and it was more than a week after I posted it that I plucked up the courage to tweet about it to the 7 followers I had at that point on my new Translating Women Twitter account. Thanks to a few generous people who spread the word about my blog and project, that following grew rapidly, and sparked innumerable encounters, opportunities and friendships that turned a tentative exploratory project into something much bigger and more meaningful.
So a lot has happened since that first review, and the Han Kang/Deborah Smith story has been at the heart of the evolution of the Translating Women project. I read everything else of Han Kang’s work that was available to me in English translation. I read most of the output of Tilted Axis Press, founded by Deborah Smith in 2015. I wrote a case study of Deborah’s activism as a translator and publisher in my book, Towards a Feminist Translator Studies: Intersectional Activism in Translation and Publishing. Through that I became friends with Deborah. All of this transformed the way I think about the global circulation of literature, and encouraged me to question all of the assumptions I had held when I first started the project.
So when Han Kang was announced as the 2024 laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature last Thursday, I was over the moon – because of the significance of a Korean woman winning a prize that has historically been so white and Eurocentric, because of the award of the prize to a writer whose work I know and admire, and also because of the very personal way in which that body of work – and how I came to read it – has been woven through the evolution of my own endeavours. I’m under no illusion about the problematic nature and history of the prize and its committee (see my 2019 “Be More Olga” post), and entirely disagree with a Guardian opinion piece published last week, which claimed that by awarding the 2024 prize to Han Kang, the Swedish academy is “reminding us” that there is a world of literature outside the west – I’d be more inclined to think that they finally woke up and realised they needed to acknowledge that. LTI Korea’s take is that the win is the culmination of their efforts to promote Korean literature. Mike Fu writes in the Japan Times that Han Kang’s Nobel win highlights the important role of translators as literary tastemakers, and in the Guardian Catherine Taylor points to the importance of small press publishing. I’ve also seen the opinion that it’s entirely down to Han Kang’s brilliance and that it dilutes her achievement to advance any of the positions such as those mentioned above. Anyway, maybe I’ll not open the can of worms that is how and why the Nobel committee makes their decisions (or at least, not today). But going forward, I’ll be watching to see whether this is the start of greater openness in the Nobel Prize in Literature, or whether they think that having one female laureate from Asia means that they’ve addressed the lack of diversity on their list.
I wanted to tweet (sorry – post – I’m stuck in pre-Musk terminology) in celebration of Han Kang’s Nobel win instantly. But I didn’t have a moment free to do so until the evening, by which point my feed had filled with posts from English-language readers and institutions saying how much they loved Han Kang’s work without acknowledging how they were able to access it. So, in haste, between two very unglamorous activities in my day, I wrote a post in celebration of Deborah’s activism. I simply intended it as a gentle reminder that so many of us across the world (and not just English-language readers, but readers of those languages in which Han Kang’s work was commissioned because of the success of the English translations, and particularly The Vegetarian) would not have been able to access her work without Deborah. I thought it was a positive statement, to counterbalance the hundreds of others that overlooked this. And that it would probably get lost in the avalanche of posts about the Nobel news.
The next morning when I woke up, I found my post must have hit some kind of algorithm, because it had had a reach and response unlike anything I’d posted before. That reach and response included a couple of replies saying I had been wrong to foreground a white woman and western publishing practices, and that in so doing I had overlooked the significance of a woman of colour from a non-Western literary culture winning the Nobel Prize (I paraphrase, as it was expressed rather more strongly than this). I was horrified, as this was neither my position nor my intention. That day was, frankly, horrendous. I read and re-read my post to understand why it had provoked this response: it seemed to rest on a concluding phrase in which I had said that in my heart, the celebrations were all about Deborah. It’s true that this did not in any way encompass the multiple levels on which I had reacted to the news. So I wrote a longer thread to acknowledge that and to offer further context (unsurprisingly, this did not get the same level of engagement). Of course no-one could know everything that was behind that phrase: that I know the toll it took on Deborah when she was savaged by critics of her translation, that I know how ethically and responsibly she used her platform in her publishing practice, that I know how toxic the industry was for her, to the point that she’s no longer actively part of it… and a lot more that it’s not my place to share. This is what the “in my heart” comment referred to. I understand that it is not possible to know this from a short post, especially in a forum that does not encourage nuance or exchange. I removed the original post to avoid any further ambiguity, and will in future be more wary about how I articulate my positions, especially in the character-limited format of a post on X.
And that’s particularly important now, because – and thank you for reading to this point – this will be my last post here on the Translating Women blog. It’s been over a year since I last wrote, and the reason for this long silence is that when this blog was moved to a different server, my entire list of subscribers was lost. Five years’ worth of following that had been built up just disappeared into the ether. It felt fitting, then, to come on here one last time and end the blog as it began: offering, without knowing whether it will reach anyone, a reflection inspired by Han Kang and Deborah Smith, and what their work has meant for me and for this project. Thank you to everyone who has followed and championed the Translating Women blog. I will, in time, find another platform to write – maybe with a different project name, because even “Translating Women” no longer fully reflects where I am now. Until then, I’ll still be @translatewomen on X, still doing my best to promote marginalised voices, and still learning, questioning, and growing. Thanks for having been part of this journey with me, and I hope you’ll stay with me as I and my work evolve.
