The Translator as Alchemist

"How do you pick the books you want to translate?" is probably the most common question a professional literary translator gets. Anton Hur discusses the process of a translator picking the books they want to translate, and to what extent the books pick the translator.

Anton Hur is the author of Toward Eternity (HarperVia) and No One Told Me Not To (Across Books). He was born in Stockholm and currently resides in Seoul. He studied law and psychology at Korea University and specialized in Victorian poetry at the Seoul National University Graduate School English program under Dr. Nancy Jiwon Cho. He won a PEN Translates grant for his translation of The Underground Village by Kang Kyeong-ae and a PEN/Heim grant for Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny, the latter of which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. His translation of Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City was also longlisted for the International Booker Prize, making him the third translator in history to be double-longlisted in the same year. Love in the Big City was also longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, which Anton also judged in 2024. His translation of Kyung-Sook Shin’s Violets and Lee Seong-bok’s Indeterminate Inflorescence were consecutively longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Awards. His other translations include Kyung-Sook Shin’s The Court Dancer and I Went to See My Father, Djuna’s Counterweight, and Baek Sehee’s international bestseller I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki and its sequel. His co-translation of Beyond the Story: 10-Year History of BTS debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. He has taught at the British Centre for Literary Translation, the Ewha University Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation, and the Bread Loaf Translators Conference. Anton is represented by Safae El-Ouahabi and Jon Wood at Rogers Coleridge & White in London.