1) Who best makes the decision as to which works are to be translated / published? Translators? KLTI? Publishers?

a.  In most cases, at present the translators of Korean literature choose a work on the basis of their own and Korean public opinion’s positive evaluation of it, and their choice is simply sanctioned by the KLTI. The completed translation is then submitted to any publishers overseas who are prepared to consider it.

But in the United States and the United Kingdom, major publishers and even some small presses refuse to consider “unsollicited submissions” and only deal with designated literary agents. They never get to see any Korean translations.

b.  There is as yet no program of the kind proposed above, by which representatives of major foreign publishers would be regularly invited to Korea to meet publishers and writers, so that the publishers can see what is currently being published and choose for themselves works that they think might be worth translating and publishing.

Such a program would only be useful if it invited representatives of publishers who are sincerely interested in publishing Korean titles. There would be no point in inviting "famous" publishers who never publish a book that will not sell several hundred thousand copies.



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