For our April episode, we spoke with award-winning literary translator and writer Sora Kim-Russell, whose translation of Hwang Sok-young's “At Dusk” was nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2019. She has won various translation awards, including the Shirley Jackson Award for her translation of Pyun Hye-young’s “The Hole.” Her translations have appeared in the New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine, among many others.

In this wide-ranging interview, we asked Sora to evaluate a Korean-to-English translation by ChatGPT of an excerpt from a short story. She shared her opinions on the impact of machine translation on the industry, her experiences as a veteran literary translator, as well as her personal process for selecting and translating works. This year, she will have two works published: a co-translation with Youngjae Josephine Bae of “Mater 2-10” (“철도원 삼대”) by Hwang Sok-yong and “The Owl Cries” (“서쪽 숲에 갔다”) by Pyun Hye-young. You can find her on Twitter at @spacenakji or see her work at sorakimrussell.com.

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, or suggestions for other Korean books you’d like us to review or discuss. Tweet us (Beth @_paperfetishist / Naomi @ngnaomi) or leave a message on The Korea Herald’s Facebook, YouTube, or Instagram page. You can also email us at bethhong@heraldcorp.com or ngnaomi@heraldcorp.com.

📢 COVID-19 precautions were taken to ensure the safety of the production team.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/khbookspodcast

Intro: ♪ Onion (Prod. by Lukrembo)
Outro: ♪ Wine (Prod. by Lukrembo)

0:00 Introducing Sora Kim-Russell 🖋️
1:25 How Sora got into translation and what keeps her going 🔥
06:13 Is there greater demand for translations and interest in translation? 📈
08:55 Recent changes to translation prize criteria around AI 🏆
10:39 Evaluating ChatGPT-aided translations as a judge 👩🏻‍⚖️
12:54 Sora’s take on a ChatGPT-translated excerpt of an idiom 📝
16:37 Human vs. machine translation 🖳👩👨
18:52 Translating idiosyncrasies of the Korean language 🇰🇷
24:56 How Sora chooses which works to translate 📚
27:15 Upcoming publications in 2023 📅