Lost In Translation - Review of Kim Young-ha's ‘I Hear Your Voice’

The place of translators in the world of fiction, represents a moral hazard of sorts. They get their name on the cover, and paid regularly by each sale, but don’t risk the same downsides in the event of failure. The author always suffers much greater damage to their reputation; if indeed the translator suffers at all. Both are coming at the same enterprise from such different directions: the author careful, and risk adverse, editing away to tedium; the translator pushing things out to publication as quickly as possible. But maybe it’s an employee’s market out there at the moment, because Kim Young-ha’s next book, a collection of short stories, ‘Diary of a Murderer’ – due to be released in early 2019 – once again uses Krys Lee for its English translation. Someone is not getting what they think they are out of this relationship.