Translating as a Heritage Speaker: Explorations and Reflections

Stine An is no stranger to linguistic imposter syndrome. Growing up in a Korean American “enclave” in Atlanta, she reports feeling “that my Korean wasn’t good enough. I also felt that my English wasn’t good enough because I had the experience of learning English as a second language.” This liminal positioning between languages and fluencies results in anxiety during the translation process. Stine added, “I’m always encountering the limits of my language, in both directions. I’ve been reflecting recently how I wish translation was more joyful, but it actually still feels really scary. When I speak Korean with my parents, I feel at ease, but when I speak Korean outside of that context, I feel anxious about it. The more I translate, the more I realize I find myself focusing on my inadequacies or my language deficits. I feel a lot of pressure to perform perfection or mastery.”

There is an expectation that one must be “fluent” to translate. But for a heritage speaker, what does fluency really mean? We are neither “native speakers”, since we grew up abroad, nor do we usually have an academic degree “proving” our fluency. Yet, as Stine points out, “there are so many white translators who feel very comfortable translating Korean literature without necessarily knowing the language well, or they might do a bridge translation with a bridge translator, which I think is problematic.” Why should we, as heritage speakers, be the ones made to feel insecure about our fluency, or prove our skills?

Encountering the limits of language can be an exciting prospect as you work to push the boundaries of what is possible. As a heritage speaker, though, it can also be immensely stressful: The act of translation necessarily reveals gaps and limits in one’s language fluency. And while these gaps are what creates an individual’s translator’s specific voice and style, these boundaries can feel particularly fraught for heritage speakers, given their relationship to language maintenance and fluency. It serves as a reminder of what you’re missing, and might continue to lose, without continuous use. “The reason I took Korean language classes in college felt very fraught because it wasn't for enrichment. I was like, oh man, if I lose my Korean language skills, I won't be able to communicate with my family. I won't be able to share my life with them.” For Stine, learning or maintaining fluency in Korean is understandably fraught; the stakes are much higher.

But at the same time, there isn’t a need to externally position herself as a heritage speaker. Despite her insecurities around nativeness, she doesn’t “necessarily” feel that her language skills need to be qualified. “I’ll mention my background as a way of finding community, connect with other translators with a similar background. One resource that has been important has been the BIPOC Literary Translators Caucus because so much of literary translation is very white.” As a heritage speaker, there are other in-roads to diversity and community within the field that do not solely hinge on the “language trauma” that accompanies such experiences.

Stine has broader concerns than mere language fluency, including the expectation of a Korean translator to serve as a cultural ambassador. “Sometimes there’s an expectation that I would be a mediator for Korean culture, when the reality is that I didn't really grow up in Korea. I haven’t really spent a lot of time there. What I can actually speak about is my experiences as a Korean American, my relationships with Korean language and Korean identity within a certain Korean American culture that I know.” Similarly, she pushes back against the idea that fluency is all that defines a heritage speaker-translator.

Stine challenges the idea that translation as a heritage speaker is all doom and gloom. While being a heritage speaker has impacted her relationship with translation, it’s not the only factor that colors their style or their work. She is aware of the risks of putting Korean literature and culture into one box, and thus, she makes countervailing efforts to deliberately nuance her work. This has “opened up a sense of possibility with the Korean language,” which is particularly meaningful for her career as a poet. As any translator with any other type of language background, heritage speakers are uniquely positioned within literary translation. 

Sora Kim-Russell first began translating in the early 2000s. “You got the sense that we were translating for the most un-Korean readers ever.” Now, recent translations keep more of the foreign visible. Certain Korean terms are left untranslated and without footnotes. This is a decision on the part of the translator that encourages a more active engagement with the text. Rather than spoon-feeding all the information necessary to a reader, Korean translators are encouraging the reader to create familiarity with the contours of Korean culture and language as they pick up a book, or to do the research themselves as they read along. In slowing down the reading process, the reader is forced to consider the translated, foreign nature of the text. This creates breathing room in which nuance can be present.

In particular, Sora aims to challenge common stereotypes around Korean literature through her choices of what she translates. “When I came into translation, the main impression that people had of Korean literature was that it was depressing—that it was all about war, that the writing itself was really bleak, and therefore nobody would want to read Korean fiction. But the literature that I was reading was by so-called ‘younger writers’ who were writing about modern life in Seoul with a comedic or quirky take, or incorporating genre fiction. These writers were already pushing against that image of Korea.”

Sora took these observations and asked herself, “How are these writers different from the received image of Korean literature? How do you bring that into the translation? One of the ideas that drove how I translated was how to keep that sense of humor in the translation. Even with older, colonial era works, a lot of it is funny. It’s satirical; there’s joy even in the darkness.”

Just like Stine, Sora emphasizes the individual nature of each Korean person’s experiences. One Korean author may have a different relationship to Koreanness and signaling foreignness than another. Thus, it is more important to ask, “What does it feel like to read something written by this one specific person who happens to be Korean?” than it is to treat all Korean literature as if it speaks on what it means to be Korean. Some writers do not aim to signal the Koreanness of the book; their work circumstantially happens to take place in Korea. While Sora does not “necessarily erase the Koreanness” in those cases, she does not “draw as much attention to it. I need to find a really clean way to explain it that doesn’t pull focus from the rest of the story.” Treating Korean literature as literature first, and Korean second, allows for a more artful and conscious analysis of how one writer conceptualizes Koreanness versus another. 

Outside of the publication, there is also the secondary question about how Sora’s identity influences the ways in which her translations are received. She foregrounds her mixed racial identity “partly because I feel like I need to first address how I look. I get very uneasy if I don’t know how people are reading me, if they’re just assuming that I’m some random white lady who really likes Korea. So I tend to want to lead with the fact that I'm mixed. I address racial identity and then language.”

This anxiety over identity mirrors and interacts with Sora’s anxieties over language. Growing up in a largely English-speaking household, she learned Korean as a second language in her university years. While she shies away from the phrase “imposter syndrome”, Sora does concede that it remains the best description of her feelings around language fluency. “I had tremendous fear about feeling like I wasn’t enough. Most gyopos, or Korean Americans, that I know who speak Korean either grew up speaking and listening but maybe didn't read, or can understand spoken Korean but aren’t as comfortable speaking it. As a translator, it’s terrifying to put work out there because you’re expected to be an expert at the language.”

Despite these anxieties, I don’t think Sora, Stine, or myself buy into the idea that to be an Asian American translator is to resign yourself to an anxiety-ridden, fearful creative existence. To argue that would grossly limit the complexity of any individual experiences, Korean American or not. Rather, I’d argue that we have a shared desire to avoid labels and boxes—both within their work and in understandings of their identity. Translation is inherently about breaking open boundaries and assumptions, crossing borders, and building bridges. To eschew the label of heritage speaker as the standalone way to qualify their work speaks to that commitment.

Especially for heritage speakers, there is an intense personal aspect to translation that is separate from the professional. Keeping those two worlds apart also helps to avoid placing Korean literary translation into a single box whilst leaving something for oneself. It allows us to share what we find salient about our own culture and heritage, while also leaving some of it for ourselves. 

As Sora says, “When I started translating, I realized I had to separate my childhood experience of Korean, leave that at home, and divorce myself. It was rough because I was resentful of the fact that I couldn’t bring that experience into the translation. But later it became kind of a relief. I didn’t have to put so much of myself on the page. I didn't have to be so vulnerable. I could be a different version of myself to translate and like to leave home at home. So it was kind of lonely for a minute there, but then I just thought of it as protecting the words that my mom used.”

Futurity and New Directions

Sora described literary translation to me as a fairly lonely job: “Translation doesn't workshop in quite the same way that writing can. You really do need other multilingual speakers who have an idea of what’s involved.” I agree with this characterization of translation within academic spaces. I have never interacted with other Korean speakers in my linguistics and translation courses at Penn, and usually translate independently and alone. Given this isolation, how can translators seek joy and community through their work while pushing past the fear, shame, and insecurity?

I found an answer by looking towards non-professional translators in online spaces. I’ve noticed in the years since I’ve graduated high school that being Korean is often now seen as cool, in a way that it never was for me growing up. There’s a certain prestige associated with being able to understand Korean language in any capacity, to be able to code switch back and forth between two cultures. It makes sense to me, then, why Korean Americans might find community and belonging online, whether as fans or fan translators. 

I spoke to Annie, who is one of 26 translators in the Bangtansubs translation collective. With over 1.5 million followers on X (formerly Twitter), Bangtansubs takes it upon themselves to translate song lyrics, video content, and social media posts from the K-Pop group BTS. As Annie shared, “I can finally share my knowledge, whatever that may be. Maybe my grandparents might think I’m not as good at Korean, but at least I can take whatever I have, and share it. It makes me feel really good in terms of being able to help in ways that I can.” While experiences with Korean language in physical spaces are often characterized by what is lacking (that is, one’s non-native upbringing), online spaces receive Korean identity incredibly positively.

Annie, like the other translators I spoke with, has anxieties over losing her Korean. Growing up in Toronto, Canada, she spoke exclusively Korean with her family. In her day job, Annie works in marketing, using more English day-to-day. Getting into K-Pop fan translation was a way for her to continue to use her Korean language skills. She cites similar insecurities as Stine around loss of language fluency: “I don’t wanna forget my first language.”

What struck me, though, was that these insecurities seemed vastly overshadowed by the love and joy that characterizes Annie’s translation work. “We wouldn’t be able to do this [volunteer work] if we didn't have the love. There’s so much pressure—BTS is such a big group! We have an unspoken responsibility to ensure that we get our boys’ message out in the world as accurately as possible. I don’t ever want to mistranslate something where people could take it the wrong way. I want to make sure it’s as great as possible, and my teammates definitely help.”

There seems to be something about an online community that plays a role in shifting this perception. This can’t be exclusively understood by thinking about family expectations, since some, like Stine or Annie, report feeling comfortable speaking Korean at home with their parents, while others, like Sora or the non-Korean members of Bangtansubs, learned it largely outside of the family environment.

There is also a level of self-empowerment that can be rewarding for these translators. For young Internet and fan translators, hobby translation is a way to control how cultural heritage is received and understood online. I corresponded via email with Wawa, who runs a tumblr blog translating short-form videos originally posted to the Chinese social media site Douyin. While his hobby translation work is the main focus, Wawa also takes time to answer questions submitted by followers regarding Chinese culture and language. When I asked what his thoughts were on this aspect of running the blog, he said, “Simply translating things and showing queer culture on my blog naturally invites those questions, so I don’t mind answering them. Although I think sometimes the language questions could really just be answered by a Google search, I guess the fact that they bothered to ask me instead means that they wanted to hear my explanation for it specifically. It suggests some level of trust in my own understanding or ability to explain things, so I take a stab at it. If I really don’t know, I will just say so.”

Wawa willingly takes on a visible presence within this online space. Rather than rejecting the request for Asian Americans to serve as ambassadors for their own culture, he sees it as a positive reflection on the impact of his work. There is a relationship of trust between online users and hobby translators that allows for nuanced conversations.

Wawa’s curation and selection of which videos to translate and subtitle is similar to how Sora challenges easy classification of Korean literature as a genre. It speaks to Wawa’s initial motivations in running his tumblr blog. In 2020, he grew concerned about the Sinophobia present on the Internet, and tumblr specifically. “Part of the reason I originally felt compelled to continue sharing Douyins once I saw that they were well-received was that I saw how it could improve the local internet perception of China/Chinese people. Talking about queer culture in China especially also helps humanize and bring light to the queer community there, who I feel like otherwise get written off as nonexistent somehow. Ironically, the belief that China persecutes and completely silences its LGBT community is very silencing itself.”

Wawa feels that engaging in these conversations online has had a positive impact in combating Sinophobia on tumblr: “Since I started translating douyins, I’ve seen a noticeable decrease in sinophobic comments and messages (not that I don’t still get them, but it’s lessened), and I think that’s also thanks in great part to other blogs on here that were posting/have started to post more content from China to help increase exposure to tumblr users.” This direct, practical approach takes advantage of the immediacy and interconnected nature of the Internet to construct a community built on shared, cross-cultural humor.

By placing themselves in a position where they can answer questions and serve as a point of authority and reference, online translators are doing important work to nuance issues around the essentialization and commodification of East Asian cultures. Literary translation calls for certain strategies to highlight nuance that rely on disrupting conventions of genre, author, and audience. Simultaneously, I also see great promise in the work of online translators who are challenging the commodification and essentialization of Asian cultures by positioning themselves as spokespersons of nuance. There are remarkable similarities in the strategies, motivations, and goals of amateur translators that speak to and echo those of professional literary translators.

For Stine, maintaining her Korean skills was merely a functional goal at first—it was a way to stay in touch with immediate family. However, translation has since enabled a relationship with the Korean language outside of pure communication. In learning more about Korean literature and poetry, Stine has found another way to connect with her parents: “I can now talk to my parents about poetry and we’ll discuss some of the poems that I’m translating. I can have other conversations with them beyond the normal things you may talk to your parents about, and that's been really fun.”

Sora characterized translation as a personal lifeline or connector, providing a way to connect with Korea even when she is disillusioned with some aspects of it: “Even when I say I’m mixed [race], I feel like I’m still seen and filed away as white. Or they’d say 외국인 [‘foreigner’], which is essentially the same as saying white. [Translation] is another way to connect with the parts of Korea that I love and the reasons I’m here. And so in that sense, it’s like a respite. It’s a way to be Korean, to be in Korea without that other noise.” Translation itself can serve as a shield against the baggage that often accompanies translation.

Those who did not grow up bilingual may feel daunted by the task of learning their heritage language, yet the process of doing so can be incredibly enriching and rewarding. On his blog’s Frequently Asked Questions page, Wawa writes that it’s “never too late for us [the Chinese diaspora] to start learning.” The process of learning Chinese via translation has served as a way to deepen Wawa’s connection with himself and his relationship with his culture, and he is now in a position where he is encouraging others to do the same.

There’s a great sense of futurity that accompanied many of my conversations with these translators. Stine, for instance, finds literary translation as a way to look at possibilities: “The reason I maintain Korean is to hold onto my family and family history. With literary translation, there’s a way to look more toward the future.” Translation can be a freeing way for Stine to reinterpret her language and culture, and find artistic expression and value in it.

Annie acknowledges that K-Pop’s popularity and the general interest in Korean culture go hand-in-hand. One day, she expects a sunset, of sorts: “I don’t know how long this Korean wave is gonna go for. As high as something goes, it can come down really quickly. That’s what trends are like.” But just because others choose to step away from K-Pop doesn’t mean she will; at the end of the day, she—and I—are still Korean, and must reconcile this possible fragmentation between internal identity and external perception of it accordingly.

I get the sense that Annie, like myself and many other translators, has found a sense of confidence in her Korean identity through translating. While this started with her love for BTS, it has since moved beyond K-Pop: “I owe a lot to BTS, because they're not afraid to be who they are, and they’ve really brought Korea out in the world. I’m definitely more proud, and I hope to consistently stay like this. I wanna stay true to myself. And I wanna just keep this going.”