Deborah Smith, the English-language translator of South Korean novelist Han Kang’s award-winning novel “The Vegetarian,” is seen in this 2016 file photo. (Image courtesy of Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — Following South Korean novelist Han Kang’s Nobel Prize win, the publishing house associated with her English translator has hailed the achievement as “a huge win for translated fiction.”
Tilted Axis Press, co-founded by Deborah Smith, one of Han Kang’s translators, took to social media to express its jubilation on Thursday.
“Congratulations to Han Kang for winning the Nobel Prize for Literature! We’d also like to extend praise to translators Deborah Smith and e. yaewon who have brought her work to the anglophone world,” it wrote on social media platform X.
Deborah Smith, who gained international recognition for her translation of Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian,” which won the International Booker Prize in 2016, has been instrumental in introducing Han’s work to English-speaking readers.
Emily Yae Won, another celebrated translator, has collaborated with Smith on “Greek Lessons” and is currently working on Han’s upcoming English translation “We Do Not Part” with Paige Aniyah Morris. The book is set for publication in the United States and Britain next year.
Co-founded by Smith in 2015, Tilted Axis specializes in contemporary literature from Asia and Africa.
(Yonhap)
