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Singapore’s got talent: Translator Shanna Tan takes South Korean bestsellers to the world
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Singaporean translator Shanna Tan, who brought South Korean bestseller Welcome To The Hyunam-dong Bookshop (2023) into English, is not your typical Korean to English literary translator.
ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE
SINGAPORE – Shanna Tan, 34, acknowledges she is not the typical profile of a literary translator from Korean to English in the Anglophone publishing world, but adds: “I feel proud to be doing this as a Singaporean. You don’t have to be restricted by the idea of what makes a typical literary translator.”
Barely three years after she pivoted from commercial translation gigs into literary translation, Tan has four South Korean bestsellers, published and upcoming, under her belt. These include Hwang Bo-reum’s Welcome To The Hyunam-dong Bookshop (2023), published by Bloomsbury in the United States and United Kingdom.
