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A Night I Wish to See No One
Sometimes, I scribble rough drafts of poems. For example, something like this:
모두가 그립지만 아무도 보고싶지 않은 밤이면
특히나 너를 더 떠올린다
끝이여 다시는 시작하지 말아라
너를 기다리다 피해 도망치다
뗏국물 낀 마룻바닥을 기어 옷장 속으로 파고든다
세상 가장 어두운 곳으로
아무 것도 분간할 수 없어서
아무 것도 무섭지 않은
저 멀리 점만한 네 그림자 들려와도 까무러치지 않게
어둠 속에서 비로소 너와 나, 그의 경계가 모두 문드러지고
나는 너고 너는 내가 되어
비로소 나는 아무도 그립지 않다
I tried translating this into English myself, and it turned out something like this:
At nights when I miss everyone but don’t want to see anyone,
I think of you even harder
End, do not begin again
Waiting for you while running away from you
Crawling across the floor stained with stories of woe,
Sleeping into the closet,
In that place where the darkness slithers and coils into a blackened knot.
Where you cannot tell X from Y
So nothing frightens nothing,
From hearing your faint figure coming from afar
I do not swoon in fear
In the place where I am you and you are me
Where the deepest black perishes the lines of who we are
All bleeding into one another
Finally there’s no one left to miss
(ChatGPT pointed out) a few issues:
-
The incorrect usage of prepositions:
- I learned that native English speakers say “on nights” rather than “at nights.” Prepositions often don’t carry clear meanings for me, so I end up memorizing what the customary usage is… Anyway, it was wrong.
-
This part of the translation sounds a bit awkward:
Where you cannot tell X from Y
So nothing frightens nothing, -
I mistakenly wrote “sleep into” instead of “slip into.” I knew the difference, but when writing quickly, I sometimes make silly mistakes. I obviously know the difference between sleep and slip.
However, ChatGPT’s suggested translation was too bland and just okay. (See below)
On nights when I miss everyone but don’t want to see anyone, I think of you the most. Let it end, never to begin again. As I wait for you, avoiding and fleeing, I crawl across the floor, worn with old grime, and burrow into the wardrobe. To the darkest place in the world, Where nothing can be made out, And nothing is frightening. Even if your shadow, no bigger than a dot in the distance, comes closer, I won’t faint in fear. When, in the depths of the dark, the boundaries between you and me, between him and me, and between him and you all blur and crumble, I become you, and you become me. Only then do I long for no one.
So the final version turned out like this. ChatGPU nitpicked a few more, but I like my translation more.
On nights when I miss everyone but wish to see no one,
I think of you even harder
End, do not begin again
Waiting for you while running away from you
Crawling across the floor stained with stories of woe,
Slipping into the closet,
In that place where the darkness slithers and coils into a blackened knot.
Where nothing can be made out, hence nothing is frightening
From hearing your faint figure coming from afar
I do not swoon in fear
In the place where I am you and you are me
Where the deepest black perishes the lines of who we are
All bleeding into one another
Finally there’s no one left to miss
Still a few issues:
- The musicality of the original got lost or at least changed during translation.
- (More fundamentally) The poem is a copycat of Choi Seung-ja’s style. As a fan of Choi Seung-ja, I can even pinpoint which parts are borrowed from which of her poems. I’ve carried over the eerie and destructive feel of Choi Seung-ja’s style exactly, and parts like “crawling across the floor, the darkness slithers” and “I do not swoon” are embarrassingly similar in style. An amateur is happy since she doesn’t have to worry about plagiarism accusations.
Sharing rough drafts of poems is a little embarrassing, but in the excitement of Han Kang winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s a blessing to have read the winner’s work in its original language, and I’m really looking forward to Deborah Smith’s translation, which is said to be incredibly smooth.