변역의 흠 (Crack in Translation)
김태영 (Sunny Kim)
이 글을 쓰면서
Writing these words
왜 글을 썼니?
Why did you write?
글씨는 읽이에 매달렸다
Words hang on reading
시인들, 그들의 목 처럼
Poets, like their necks
새로운 개발을 못했다고
That they could not innovate
버림 받고
Abandoned
두려움이 이 글을 쓴다.
Fear writes these words.
다른자에 의견이 두려워서
Afraid of others’ opinions
독특한 사상을 했지
I envisioned uniqueness
사실은 쓴맛 밖에.
But only taste bitter truth.
Author’s remark:
I wrote this poem with two goals in mind, first to express the anxiety of writing for an audience. Merited or not, I have always felt the need to invent a style to impress, rather than writing with a purpose in mind. Second, from my childhood, I remember my mother lamenting the loss of meaning when Korean literature was translated into English. I have written to express that disconnect between languages in the hope that the audience will be left wanting, as isolating the English translation results in a disjointed, distant poem.