Kim shared what their students should expect from the course:
Without translation, English speakers would be deprived of the pleasures of reading classics like The Odyssey and watching international shows like Squid Game. Unlike other artistic modes like painting and music, literature depends on translation to circulate worldwide. Yet, translation is usually sidelined as the invisible counterpart to literature. In this course, we will bring translation back to the center of debates on contemporary literature as we explore the key ethical, social, and political questions animating the practice of translation. What does it mean for a novel to get “lost in translation”? Or does a novel gain something in translation? Can translation be conceived as a creative and interpretive act? How does translation complicate the national categorizations of literature? Why do certain books get translated at the cost of others?
To answer these questions, we will read various recent novels written by authors worldwide. We will engage with rises in global bestsellers such as Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend (2011, Italian), which claims that the English translation enhances Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem (2008, Chinese); charges of mistranslation surrounding Han Kang’s International Booker Prize winner, The Vegetarian (2007, Korean); deployments of strategic exoticism in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red (2001, Turkish); and experiments of a multilingual and vernacular novel in Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007, English-Spanglish). Secondary material will include TV series adaptations (Netflix’s Three-Body Problem and HBO’s My Brilliant Friend), translators’ commentaries, and philosophical essays. This course integrates literary and translation studies to enable us to become attentive readers and informed and empowered agents who can influence global cultural production.
