сарам

A translation is a living thing. It shifts and changes over time. It can be wounded or be born flawed. It can be tamed. It might even die.

I have translated many things over the years, but my greatest failure to this day is my attempt to translate the following Korean sentence:

아홉 살이었을 때, 나는 배가 아플 때까지 개고기를 먹은 적이 있었다.

I imagine Stalin, ever the consummate smoker, swearing as he digs at his pipe. As soon as it is clean, he wastes no time. Great plumes of smoke quickly obscure his face. The others fret. They nervously chew on their medals. They fear the pipe smoke because it hides the man’s face, makes it impossible to tell what he is thinking about. In the bathroom, members of the Politburo exchange rumors about how it’s not really pipe smoke at all—he is the Devil. The real deal with a capital D, and the pipe is just there to hide the fact that sulfur and brimstone sometimes leak from his orifices.

Within the cloud, a voice thunders. What is to be done about the Koreans?

Translation/Specimen No. 1

This is my first specimen, the first thing I gave birth to. The first translation is visionary, which then makes me, in turn, also a visionary. A doubling. An archetype, or a prototype, or maybe a protomartyr.

The specimen is also dead. A taxidermy. For this specimen, death has proven to be a giver, not a taker. After the corpse gas has its say, the specimen balloons up to slapstick proportions. It’s an ugly thing, but I keep it.

Back then, I believed my methodology to be safe, in every sense of the word. I thought I could tame the original text, make it sing for its supper. I’d run a satisfied finger over its muzzle, its seams stitched with revisions and footnotes and addendums. My first translation takes hours to read, weighed down with comments on how I was just a small child in a frightening foreign country, how I left Korea behind and came to Uzbekistan against my will. How I was just glad to see a steaming bowl of broth and rice because it reminded me of Korea. That the servers at the bazaar had the same kind of high cheekbones as me and the side dishes on the chipped porcelain bowls almost tasted like kimchi. The actual translated text—my consumption of dog meat—comes much later.

I’d show the specimen to all those who would listen. I could have packed lecture halls about my translation. I used to implore you to look away from the bowl. Ignore the stringy cuts of dog meat. Give it context, please. Yes, I ate the dog, but I can justify it. I didn’t know. Please, cut me some slack. Don’t look at me like that. Just hear me out.

In Russian, the term Корё-сарам refers to Koreans who were deported from the USSR during the Stalin era. The majority of whom now reside in Uzbekistan, a country I spent four years in.

Корё refers to Koryo, an ancient Korean kingdom that was destroyed some six hundred years ago. Сара́м means сара́м which means сара́м which means сара́м. Which does not mean anything in Russian; it is a sound-for-sound transference of the Korean word for people. Which means that the term Корё-сарам is a term that does not exist, in the truest sense. Does not exist because our kingdom was overthrown, annihilated, and annexed. It also does not exist because our word for people did not merit a translation, only a poorly imitated sound.

Translation/Specimen No. 2

This translation occurs when I choose to be a turncoat. Let’s sell out. I’m a dirty dog-eating Korean. So sorry. I’ll be better.

“They really eat dogs over there,” I’d tell my rapt audience night after night. “Not only that, but they beat the dogs to death— to extract every last bit of flavor from the meat.”

I raise my eyebrows in mock horror. My audience imitates my expression, but their disgust is real.

I admit this specimen is popular. It makes me sound real and raw. This translation tells it like it is. It’s not fucked up because it’s true—those backward savages really eat dogs over there. I nearly went native; I was even convinced to eat some. But I heard the good message and now I’m here today to testify against my wicked ways. Hear me out.  I once was lost, but now I’m found.

The servers tell me that it is kimchi, but surely not, I think. The cabbage is the wrong kind, and they’ve been pickled in vinegar, not fermented. Thin slices of carrots that have been marinated. I instead spoon another mouthful of broth. It’s not exactly Korean, but it’s close. I feel at home. But the side dish of cabbage, I cannot accept. It is not kimchi.

The Корё-сарам woman at the counter has neither teeth nor patience for spoiled little Korean brats. She points to the cabbage and says kimchi. There is a finality to her tone. The latter she refers to by some Russian word I cannot understand. It is only later that I find out that the word is марков-ча, and that the etymology of the word is half Russian and half something else, something that used to be Korean but no longer.

I imagine being the Корё-сарам at the bazaar, then imagine being a Корё-сарам eighty years ago, what it’s like to cook my country’s food in a country that does not believe in our condiments, a land where my country’s crops will not take.

Stalin and Molotov sign Resolution 1428-326 ss. In my head, this is how it goes.

Molotov insists on using nothing but red ink. Stalin realizes that his handwriting is worse than his incendiary comrade’s. He insists on practicing his signature for forty-eight hours. The two spend another twenty-four hours bickering over what to call the resolution. It takes the pair three days, four fountain pens, sixteen drafts, and six dead secretaries: On the Exile of the Korean Population from border Raions of the Far East Kray. Faintly visible under the white-out is the sentence Plan on How to Kick Out the Stinky Koreans.

Afterward, they smoke cigars and call in the photographers. There is an exceedingly large stain around Molotov’s armpits, but Stalin assures him it’s not that visible. He stifles a giggle as they pose for the photo.

This is the only way I can picture it happening, because that makes me laugh. I like laughing. I need to laugh. I have to because not laughing is too exhausting, because Resolution 1428-326 ss cites the dangers of Koreans living in the USSR acting as spies for Japan. Never mind that it is 1937 and it’s been only twenty-seven years since our country was forcibly annexed and colonized by Japan. To Stalin, it’s all the same, Koreans and Japanese. Shifty, untrustworthy dog-eating fucks.

Before the year is out, over thirty-six thousand Korean families are deported, most of them farmers and fishermen. In the next year, forty thousand die in the arid steppes of Central Asia.

Translation/Specimen No. 3

Truth be told, this translation isn’t actually mine. I’m merely borrowing it. It belongs to George Petras and his article in USA Today. His LinkedIn page describes him as “meticulous” and “detail-oriented.” He writes, South Koreans eat more than 1 million dogs each year — but that’s slowly changing.

“They know not what they eat,” Petras shouts. “And the ones that do feel really bad

about it—up to a whopping 60%. Read all about it in my article.”

He means well. I get it. He wants to convince all the nice people that read USA Today and his award-winning Gannett newspapers. Despite their disgusting tendency to eat dogs, the Koreans are slowly figuring their shit out. They’ll knock it off eventually.

In July 2019, the South Korean government feels particularly magnanimous. It peacocks for a while before finally making the announcement: they now recognize even fourth- and fifth- generation Корё-сарам as Koreans, granting them permanent residence. A man appears on TV and thanks the government with tears in his eyes.

Never mind that many Корё-сарам do not have the necessary document or the economic ability to exercise their right to become Korean. The government tried—isn’t that enough?

Translation/Specimen No. 4

(n.) Dog-eater; a pejorative directed at Koreans, particularly aimed at those who were displaced by Stalin.

Our government briefly tries to outlaw the sale of dog meat in Seoul. They chase restaurants out of the main street, tear their signs down. Vendors are forced to change their menus; they now say good-health-soup instead of dog.

The ban lasts four years, until the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Then it is dropped. A ban based not on concern for the animals but on anticipated criticism from other countries, all those nice, more-civilized places that were gracious enough let us host such an important affair. We don’t want to offend their cultured sensibilities. We kowtow, our tails curled. The truism of dog eat dog falls apart. Because while we stop eating dogs, we become dogs ourselves, wincing at the raised hand of our betters.

Translation/Specimen No. 5

An aggressive specimen/translation. But I was angry back then.

“Yes, I ate dog,” I’d tell my very white and very suburban classmates from Hamilton, Massachusetts. “So what? I’ll eat your dog too.”

In the same way that masochism and sadism are the same desire, merely directed at opposite ends, I flip the script. I take the guilt lacerating my guts and turn it upon them. Those who live by the sword, so on and so forth.

“Isn’t it a bit fucked that you just assume that eating dogs is wrong?” I ask.

For years, I stick with this translation. I’m nearly proud of it. I point out the sadism in foie gras and veal and cooking live lobster.

“The traditional way of preparing ortolans is to drown them alive in Armagnac,” I tell them. “It’s fucked.”

I accuse them; it’s fitting. Because we ate dogs to survive, while you lot did it out of indulgence and greed. In truth, you are the ones who are wrong, who are inhuman.

But in the end, this specimen, too, is imperfect. It does not know how to speak without wounding, when all I want is to be understood—without wounding or being wounded.

In 2001, Brigitte Bardot, French actor turned activist, grants an interview over the phone with Sohn Suk-hee, a news anchor.

Bardot is disgusted with Koreans for eating dogs. She accepts “that many people eat beef,” but maintains that “a cultured country does not allow its people to eat dogs.” It’s barbaric, she says.

I relisten to the interview. Sohn asks a question, and Bardot’s interpreter translates her statement in Korean. We do not get to hear Bardot’s actual words.

“Isn’t the real barbarism stealing another country’s cultural heritage?” Sohn asks, referring to a set of Korean texts from the 1700s that were stolen by the French army after they burned the library down in 1866. Bardot replies that a country that eats dog cannot be trusted to maintain objects of historical significance. It’s a good thing that they took our things. France, a more enlightened country, will keep them secure.

There was a time when I wondered about Bardot’s voice, what she might have sounded like. Now I think about the translator. I wonder what she thought as she smoothly rendered Bardot into Korean, her words as cool and dry as the inside of a fridge.

I have no intention of defending dog-eating. I am well aware of the cruelty of the dog farms and the process.

I have been to the farms. I’ve seen the dogs. Can you say the same?

Uzbekistan, the place where I spent much of my childhood, is the country with the biggest population of Корё-сарам.

In 2017, the president of Uzbekistan visits Korea to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of diplomacy. Our government releases a booklet titled 우즈베키스탄 개황, roughly translating to “An Overview of Uzbekistan.” The original text mentions the Корё-сарам and their situation. The phrasing used is “forced relocation.”

When the Uzbek president visits, the booklet is edited. They get rid of the word forced.

It is a shoddy job—we don’t even bother reprinting. Instead, the word is simply taped over, leaving a blank space where the word forced used to be. It is an unnatural stretch of white, a no-man’s land of erasure.

I stare at the emptiness, and at what lies hidden below. Something once there, forcibly removed.

I turn that memory at the bazaar over and over in my hand until it is smooth as a riverbed rock.

I retrace my steps until I find nine-year-old me. He has been yelling all this time. His face is beet red. I think he’s been crying. I squat down next to him and watch him call the Корё-сарам woman a liar, first in English, then in Korean. He turns to me, tugging on my sleeves to demand that I do something.

“This is all wrong,” he says, stamping his feet.

“If you aren’t eating that, I am,” I tell him.

I grab fistfuls of carrot and shovel them into my mouth. They are cold and delicious. The marinade dribbles down my chin.

My nine-year-old self begins crying again.

“This isn’t kimchi,” he tells me.

“Does that matter?” I ask. “She made it because she remembered a place she once called home. Food and people that were hers.”

Because this was her attempt, torn between a foreign country that will not love her and her once home country that will do nothing but offer empty gestures.

“She is not Korean,” nine-year-old me insists.

“She is here,” I tell him with a shrug and resume chewing.

A translation/specimen that I either sought so desperately but could not find, or did not have the guts to create, or my peers would not accept, a translation that I wanted to neither rationalize nor defend nor use to demonstrate your ignorance. All I wanted to do was to translate but they grab me by the collar and demand that I justify.

Once, when I was nine, I ate dog until my stomach hurt.

An unlikely group stands before me: members of the Korean government, the president of Uzbekistan, Stalin, Molotov, and all of America (that I’ve been subjected to).

“Well?” they all ask impatiently. “What does that Korean sentence above mean? Translate for us.”

I offer translation after translation. Interpretations with no regard for fidelity to the original text. Because I want to convey the heart of the matter, this feeling in the gut of my gut.

It means that anyone could mistake a dog for a Korean.

Actually, it means the 38th parallel line between South and North Korea is a literary motif made material, one that turns our peninsula into two gothic doubles.

It means I cry over every dog on my table.

No, I meant to say that I cry over every dog that escaped my table.

Me dog eat. Dog eat bad. Sorry dog. Sorry you. Sorry me.

They stare, unimpressed.

“Last chance,” they tell me. “What are you saying? Which one are you? Are you a dog-eater or not?”

I reject the dichotomy and become something else instead, a chimera. Not a Korean, or a translator, and not even a dog. A malformed and beautiful thing that refuses to translate, answer, or justify. I snarl, my teeth bloody.

Photo by inga, used and adapted under CC.