Accidental translator Shanna Tan signs four book deals, including for South Korean bestsellers

SINGAPORE – Singaporean Shanna Tan stumbled into translation when she translated a tweet from a K-pop idol.

“I never really thought I wanted to work towards being a translator. It was a natural journey that just materialised,” says the 33-year-old.

The polyglot, who has been self-studying Korean since 2008, also translates from Japanese and Chinese, and is now learning Thai.

Today, the home-grown self-starter is one of the rising stars in translation being tapped by international publishers such as Bloomsbury and Penguin Random House to bring some of South Korea’s bestsellers into the English-language market.

Her debut translation, Welcome To The Hyunam-dong Bookshop by South Korean writer Hwang Bo-reum, is a heart-warming novel that features a bookseller recovering from burnout. Published by Bloomsbury UK in October, the book debuted at No. 2 on

The Straits Times’ bestsellers list

.

Hwang’s book began as a serialised novel on the South Korean online writing platform Brunch before gaining the attention of traditional publishers. It has sold more than 200,000 copies in Korean and has been adapted into an audio play.

“I’ve always vaguely wanted to do something that brings Korean literature to a wider audience, but I never thought it would happen so fast,” says Tan, who marvels that it has been only two years since she pivoted from commercial translation gigs into literary translation.

By most standards, she has had an explosive entrance into the world of literary translation.

In 2023, she signed a deal with Doubleday, an imprint of Penguin Random House UK, to translate Yun Jung-eun’s Marigold Mind Laundry, and recently inked another one, which she remains tight-lipped about.

Her literary translation journey

was sparked by reading Anton Hur’s translation of The Court Dancer (2018) by Shin Kyung-sook. “It read so beautifully, and it made me look at literary translation in a new light,” she says.

Fittingly, Hur, who was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, mentored Tan and became one of her most important advocates, introducing her to key editors who eventually became her publishers.

On why Welcome To The Hyunam-dong Bookshop resonates with her, Tan says: “Singaporean and South Korean societies are quite competitive. This book teaches you to be comfortable in your own skin and that everyone is working towards becoming better versions of themselves.”

Tan, too, dreams of running a bookstore. Her ideal bookstore would feature titles of translated fiction and shelves of language-learning books. It would be a place she could hold talks with Singaporean writers whose works have been translated into multiple languages.

“This book gives you an ideal image of what I hope a bookstore feels like,” she says, adding that she is inspired by bookstores such as Foyles in London’s Charing Cross Road and Singapore’s Grassroots Books and BookBar.

In early 2024, she is slated to release her translation of Chinese-language writer Wong Koi Tet’s dakota (2018) with Singapore-based publisher City Book Room. Wong’s creative non-fiction book, which won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018, tells of the writer’s childhood in Dakota Crescent in the 1970s.

The challenge now, however, is taking the book to overseas markets.

Tan says she is encouraged by the interest – excerpts of her translations have been published in notable American literary magazines such as The Southern Review and The Common – and adds that she is working hard to pitch this book to a publisher.

While few works of translated Singapore literature are published in overseas markets, Tan wonders if this is solely a matter of how readers and publishers receive Singaporean writers: “Are there even translators trying in the first place?”

Adding that she feels she is becoming a better translator with each book, Tan says: “This year is the year I explore what literary translation can do for me.”

She is trying to go full time in the field, but even a translator who has four books in the bag acknowledges the difficulties. Translated literature in the United States, for example, makes up a mere 3 per cent of all books published.

“In literary translation, hard work can’t guarantee you books,” she says. “You can’t guarantee anything, but I’m trying to make it a majority of my life.”

Welcome To The Hyunam-dong Bookshop ($32.74) by Hwang Bo-reum, translated by Shanna Tan, is available from Amazon SG (

amzn.to/46242gd

) and major bookstores.