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Contributor

Anton Hur

A portrait of translator Anton Hur
Anton Hur
Contributor

Anton Hur

Anton Hur 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 2022 International Booker Prize. His translation of Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City was longlisted for the same prize in the same year. His translation of Violets was 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, Hwang Sok-yong’s The Prisoner, and Baek Sehee’s I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki. 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. Also a writer, Anton is represented by Jon Wood at Rogers Coleridge & White in London and his writing is published in Words Without BordersAsymptote JournalLitro, and others.

Articles by Anton Hur

Something No One Else Has
By Kyung-sook Shin
San feels reassured that Namae’s body is as skinny and pathetic as her own.
Translated from Korean by Anton Hur
The Literary Life of K-pop Lyrics
By Sang Young Park
I’d accumulated what is surely the biggest collection of gem-like K-pop lyrics in the world.
Translated by Anton Hur
The Interrogation
By Hwang Sok-Yong
In the 1990s, writer and Korean reunification activist Hwang Sok-yong spent five years in prison for visiting North Korea in violation of South Korea’s National Security Act. In his memoir The…
Translated by Anton Hur & Sora Kim-Russell
The Great White Canceling
By Anton Hur
Translator Anton Hur takes a wry look at race and translation in this essay.You’re a white translator. I come into your home office and break your computer. I run a bath and drown all your…
Translating the World Undone: An Interview with Translator Nicholas Glastonbury
By Anton Hur
Last month, literary translator Nicholas Glastonbury, who translates from Turkish and Kurdish, posted a Twitter thread about the failings of the publishing industry when it comes to translated literature.…
Korean Literature Is Stepping Out
By Anton Hur
Now, thanks to our authors, we’re ready to step forth into the sun.
About My Daughter
By Kim Hye-jin
These kids could be just clever, fancy thugs.
Translated from Korean by Anton Hur
An Interview with Sang Young Park
By Anton Hur
The title story of Sang Young Park’s debut collection, Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta (Munhakdongne, 2018), is serialized in Words Without Borders in Anton Hur’s translation.…
The Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta, Part III
By Sang Young Park
We were five minutes out on our jeep when the sound of an explosion big enough to shake the car resounded from behind us.
Translated from Korean by Anton Hur
The Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta, Part II
By Sang Young Park
I knew better than anyone else that Oh was not gay, that he was just using these rumors.
Translated from Korean by Anton Hur
The Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta
By Sang Young Park
I went to Iraq to make a queer film the likes of which the world had never seen.
Translated from Korean by Anton Hur
Multimedia
The Emerging Literary Translator Valley of Death
By Anton Hur
Anton Hur, translator of Kyung-Sook Shin’s The Court Dancer and Kang Kyeong-ae’s The Underground Village, offers insights into the challenges facing literary translators and tips for…
Writing Outside the Mainstream: An Interview with Jeon Sam-hye
By Anton Hur
Image: Anton Hur and Jeon Sam-hye at Seoul Pride, 2016.Anton Hur’s translaton of Jeon Sam-hye’s story “Genesis” appears in the June 2016 issue of Words without Borders: “The…
From the Translator: A Lunar Sorority
By Anton Hur
Image: Phases of the Moon. (CC0 Public Domain.)Anton Hur’s translation of Jeon Sam-hye’s “Genesis” appears in the June 2016 issue of Words without Borders: “The…
Genesis
By Jeon Sam-hye
Because what you felt when he turned you down was how I felt whenever I looked at you.
Translated from Korean by Anton Hur
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