My main project during the semester at my internship has been making an English version of a book produced by IGSR. The book is an illustrated children’s book called 북극곰이 파래요 (The Polar Bear is Blue). The book was produced to deliver the moral of embracing differences and living together in harmony, and brings the message that our differences, when brought together, make us stronger together than alone.

I thought that since the book is geared toward children, the translation from Korean to English would be fairly easy. However, I quickly realized that it was not as clear cut as I thought. It is one thing to be able to understand the story in Korean, but another thing to translate it into English in a way that makes sense and flows well. Korean and English have quite different sentence structures, and methods of description tend to also differ in nature. I found myself struggling in many instances to translate passages into English in a way that sounded natural but also preserved the original meaning. As my first major translation project from Korean to English, it was definitely a learning experience.

My first English version of the book was not quite a literal translation but stuck very close to the original text, with changes only being made to make the English sound more natural. However, the flow was still a little bit awkward in places, because some of the descriptions, while they sounded natural in Korean, came off a bit odd when described in the same style in English.

The next step in the process was to take my English translation and rewrite the story in my own style. My manager wanted to change the narrative style itself a bit for the English version; in the original Korean version the story contained somewhat long explanations and descriptions, so she was interested in changing this to a simpler style to make the story more accessible to children, the target audience. For this revision I had the freedom to reformulate the sentences to a structure that was more natural in English and make the narrative more concise. It has taken me a few revisions to get the hang of children’s book-style writing, and I am currently working with my manager on finalizing the English version.

This project has been a great opportunity for me to learn about the nuances of translating between languages, particularly in a literary context. It has been a fun and interesting challenge for me both in terms of my Korean skills and writing in general, and I am also glad I can contribute in a major way to a published product at IGSR.