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Comment by bnchrch | Hacker News Reader

Figure I'd pull an arbitrary quote from Han Kang for this. Translated obviously

> “There is none of us whom life regards with any partiality. Sleet falls as she walks these streets, holding this knowledge inside her. Sleet that leaves cheeks and eyebrows heavy with moisture. Everything passes.” - Han Kang

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Is there a better, and actually insightful quote from her that we should know about? Because this is the sort of writing you'd expect from an emo 6th grader, not a Nobel prize winner. "Life isn't fair, nothing lasts forever" isn't exactly genius level stuff.

>> "There is none of us whom life regards with any partiality."

That means the opposite of "Life isn't fair". Partiality - unfair bias in favor of one thing or person compared with another; favoritism.

She's written, in that quote, that life is fair.

Life is inherently unfair because you don't get to choose the circumstances in which you are born. Sure, you can argue that after that point the universe doesn't give a crap about you, but the starting point matters more than anything else. That's why I regard her quote as surface level and childish.

The point is that it goes equally for everyone. No one gets to choose the circumstances they're born into.

> Life is inherently unfair

If you want to complain about life being unfair like "an emo 6th grader" that's your choice, I was just pointing out that she wrote the opposite of that. Your original comment appeared to equate her statement with "life is unfair" when that was the opposite of what she wrote (as it was translated, at least). Critique her writing all you want, but critique what she wrote, not what she didn't.

Life is the full encompassing situation you are in. Living is what happens while you're alive. This isn't hard, and that prose is banal regardless of how you want to argue.

I don't think she is best known for a beautiful, insightful writing styles. To understand this case better, you probably want to understand the modern history of S. Korea, especially the connection between her book "Human acts" and the Gwangju massacre.

EDIT: Actually Nobel Committee's bibliography does a good job on her works.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2024/bio-biblio...

> you probably want to understand the modern history of S. Korea,

"The uprising was violently suppressed by the South Korean military with the approval and logistical support of the United States under Carter administration, which feared the uprising might spread to other cities and tempt North Korea to interfere.

So normal democracy at work. Nothing to see here. /s

Korean existentialism reinvented?

Everything passes but also remains unchanged.

its very sad that asian prose translates so terribly into english

Even knowing no asian languages, I can just feel something missing, especially in the first sentence there

I don't think that has anything to do with the continent. People like Haruki Murakami and Liu Cixin have achieved immense reader-bases with their English translations.

It probably has to do with linguistic distance though. It is safe to assume that Dutch to English translation loses much less in nuance than Korean to English.

It's not just linguistic distance. A good literary translator needs to really understand of the source material, with all of its cultural context and multiple possible interpretations, and somehow recreate the same effect in the target language.

This requires not only linguistic fluency but also a deep understanding of both cultures, as well as the literary traditions of both. If an English author makes a subtle allusion to a passage from Shakespeare, for example, how do you translate that nuance to a language that hasn't had Shakespeare?

I suppose it's much easier to achieve this between Dutch and English, than between Korean and English. The pool of people who move about freely between the latter is much smaller, for both geographical and historical reasons.

You've hit the nail on the head and I wish I could give you ten upvotes.

A different example I sometimes use is the task of translating a children's book that has "busy bees" in it. The illustrations show bees being busy. The story might even resolve around that to some extent. But another reason the bees are busy is that "busy" sounds like the buzzing sound they make. So what does one do when translating this into a language where the word for the regular meaning of "busy" does not sound like "buzz"? Whatever one does, something must be lost in the translation.

I have tried and failed to translate into my ancestral language the books I read to my children for exactly this reason. Another issue is that the specific choices of foods, animals and so forth are awkward to translate smoothly, but they are pictured so I cannot change them.

I read both and the style is tedious, especially the dialogues, and I can only assume it's a translation thing.

Have to agree, 3 body problem is fascinating from technological future fantasy perspective, but high quality reading overall in English it was not. Shallow characters, very pro-china and anti-whole-western-world black&white mindset that modern free world grew away long time ago.

Had to force myself reading to the end of trilogy, above goes into overdrive.

> black&white mindset that modern free world grew away long time ago

Don't even know what to say. I am not sure we live in the same world lol.

You read a pop sci fi book and are surprised when you get pop sci fi? Chinese culture tends to place much more emphasis on prose in general in pop books in my experience but you picked one of the worst examples of that. That series is very strongly influenced by western sci fi culture so I find it really funny that you use it as an example of chinese culture being worse.

Whoa I never said Chinese culture is worse and I certainly dont think that, why the needless fabulated attack?

I just didnt like the books apart from technological aspects that much, is it that hard to understand and accept that some folks look for more than just wow-what-a-cool-description-of-4D-in-3D?

It was pushed from all directions as something spectacular and well, that bar lies much higher for some, thats all.

I feel like someone who wasn't familar with Chinese history or culture would miss a lot of what was happening in that book. A lot happens that isn't directly explained.

Also depends if you read the version with the cultural revolution scenes in the beginning or in the middle.

> Shallow characters, very pro-china and anti-whole-western-world black&white mindset that modern free world grew away long time ago.

I think you missed the latest news.

And vice versa. So many English works translated to Korean read like chewing sand.

It doesn't help that books don't sell well in Korea and translators are poorly paid. Often you can literally see "Oh the original English word must be X, because it doesn't make sense and the translator just used the more popular meaning of the word!"

> It doesn't help that books don't sell well in Korea and translators are poorly paid.

Maybe that's the problem.

I've seen translated books where you could identify the birth region of the translator based on the words used.

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