Koreans Studying their Translated Works

The Korea Literature Translation Institute (KLTI) started a two-year project in 2007 to evaluate published English translations of Korean literature. In the first stage of evaluation work. 41 novels in 72 editions from 721 books that had been translated and published up to 2006 were evaluated. The second stage of the survey will focus on poetry and be completed by the end of 2008.

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The results of this project will be used to estimate the level and problems of Korean literature translated into English and for establishing an important database for its improvement.

A lot of countries have book offices which promote the translation of their national literatures, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this. They’re studying all of their works that have been translated into English to determine the quality of the translations!

So far, they say only 10% of the translations they’ve evaluated merit a score of “high readability”. I’d be curious to find out what these books are, although I can’t imagine the lists would ever be released.

I wonder if they’ll release some kind of analysis of their findings at the end of the study…

(via LS)