Janet Hong ( Korean: 홍지명) is a writer and translator of

Korean literature Korean literature is the body of literature produced by Koreans, mostly in the Korean language and sometimes in Classical Chinese. For much of Korea's 1,500 years of literary history, it was written in Hanja. It is commonly divided into classica ...

based in Vancouver, Canada. She has translated numerous works of fiction, essays, and

graphic novel A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...

s such as Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's ''Grass.'' Her translation of the graphic novel ''Moms'' by Yeong-shin Ma is set to be adapted for television by

Playground Entertainment Playground Entertainment is a television, film and theatre production company with offices in New York and London, founded in 2012 by Sir Colin Callender, former President of HBO Films. Television The company has produced over 90 hours of televisi ...

Life and work

While studying English literature at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

, Hong began translating with the short story, ''The Woman Next Door'' by Ha Seong-nan. At the encouragement of a Korean language professor, she submitted the translation for the 2001 Korea Times Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards and won the grand prize. She later received grants from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea to translate the rest of the collection. Eighteen years after its Korean publication, it was published by

Open Letter Books Open Letter Books is an American publishing house based at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York. It was founded in 2008 by Chad W. Post, the Editor-in-Chief of Dalkey Archive Press. It specializes in translation, a less-populated ...

as ''Flowers of Mold'' in 2019. Hong's second translation of Ha's fiction, ''Bluebeard's First Wife'', was published the following summer with a grant from the Daesan Foundation. In addition to graduating from the

University of Guelph , mottoeng = "to learn the reasons of realities" , established = May 8, 1964 ()As constituents: OAC: (1874) Macdonald Institute: (1903) OVC: (1922) , type = Public university , chancellor ...

with an MFA in creative writing, Hong's translations have garnered numerous accolades and praise, including the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants for her translation of

Han Yujoo Han Yujoo (born 1982) is a South Korean writer. Her novels portray not so much the fate of people embroiled in some kind of conflict as their psychological state when they contemplate a situation or idea. She focuses on recording spontaneous tho ...

's ''The Impossible Fairy Tale'' and two Harvey Awards for Best International Book. Hong's work in the challenges of translating onomatopoetic phases and puns from Korean into English has been of noted success, such as the wordplay in ''Lemon'' by Kwon Yeo-sun.

"One formidable translation challenge to which Hong rises comes just three pages in, when Sanghui ponders the nickname given to the suspected killer Han Manu. Its source is Cho Yong-pil’s late-1970s ballad “Han-o-baeg-nyeon” (한오백년): to Manu’s classmates, “the opening words ‘ha-an-man-eu-eu-eun’ sounded just like his name. If you slurred the n sound so that you said ‘ha-an-man-u–u–u‘ instead, it was perfect.”

She has credited in part the rise of translated Korean literature to the commercial success and visibility of ''

Please Look After Mom ''Please Look After Mom'' () is a novel by South Korean author Kyung-sook Shin. It sold a million copies within 10 months of release in 2009 in South Korea, is critically acclaimed internationally and the English translation by Chi-young Kim w ...

'' by Shin Kyung-sook, as well as

Han Kang Han Kang (; born November 27, 1970) is a South Korean writer. She won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016 for ''The Vegetarian'', a novel about a woman's descent into mental illness and neglect from her family. The novel is ...

's ''

The Vegetarian ''The Vegetarian'' () is a South Korean three-part novel written by Han Kang and first published in 2007. Based on Han's 1997 short story "The Fruit of My Woman", ''The Vegetarian'' is set in modern-day Seoul and tells the story of Yeong-hye, a ...

'' winning the 2016 International Booker Prize. In September 2021, it was announced that Hong would be the Korean prose mentor for the American Literary Translators Association Emerging Translator Mentorship Program.

Translations

* * * * * * * * * * * * Yeong-shin, Ma (2022), ''Artist'', Montreal, Quebec: Drawn & Quarterly

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hong, Janet Canadian translators Living people Canadian people of Korean descent Literary translators Korean–English translators University of Guelph alumni Year of birth missing (living people)