Overcoming Barriers: Korea in Translation

Speaker: Brother Anthony (An Seon Jae)

Abstract

Brother Anthony (who has been publishing translations of Korean poetry and fiction since 1990) will begin by talking about some of the books by which Korea and its region first became known in centuries past, books that were translated from and into a variety of languages. He will then review the ways in which Korean writing first underwent translation into English before summarizing some of the poetry and popular novels he has translated.

Finally he will talk about the annotated translations from Latin of the letters written by the first 2 Korean Catholic priests, Kim Dae-geon and Choe Yang-eop, published in the last 2 years as well as an annotated translation from French of the 2-volume History of the Catholic Church in Korea by Charles Dallet (1874) which is not yet published. He will also mention various other Korea-related translations as time permits.

Speaker Biography

Brother Anthony was born in Cornwall in 1942. After 9 years at Oxford he joined the Community of Taizé in 1969. Since 1980 he has been living withother brothers from Taizé in Seoul. He was for many years a professor at Sogang University. He is now Emeritus Professor there and Chair-Professor at Dankook University.

Since 1990 he has published over 50 volumes of translated Korean poetry as well as several novels and a number of other books, including The Korean Way of Tea. He was President of the Royal Asiatic Society (Korea) for 10 years. He took Korean nationality in 1994, his legal Korean name is An Seonjae. He holds an Honorary MBE.

Registration

This event is free and open to public.

If you would like to attend in person, please register via Microsoft Forms.

Organiser: SOAS Centre of Korean Studies

Contact: centres@soas.ac.uk