This is where she purges out stuff she'd rather leave unverbalized. Enivrez-vous!
(All writings: © So-Rim Lee. All Rights Reserved.)

Entries in 아우성 (1)

Wednesday
Mar032010

"Howl" and "Bawl": The Unconquerable Difference

Towards the end of 2009, I worked on translating Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems into Korean, cover-to-cover. On the way, I did a Google search and stumbled upon a website where someone else had unofficially translated "Howl(울부짖음)" as"Bawl(아우성)." Being a self-proclaimed beatnik, in the most un-derogatory sense of the word, I was very angry upon the damage that person had done to one of Ginsberg's finest works. This is the doldrum of the day: there just aren't enough translations available still, and someone takes a brave step to do it, and do it the wrong way. I am not saying that my translations, which will stay amateur until the day it is published, are better off; I am just saying that there's a reason culture difference and "cult difference" exist between nations apart from each other for more than three-hour plane rides.