Revisiting Han Kang’s "The Vegetarian"

A comparison between the French and English translations

I first read The Vegetarian by Han Kang in 2016 or 2017, soon after it had won the Man Booker International Prize. I was hesitant at first, worried that with a title like “The Vegetarian” the book would be some sort of manifesto against meat eating, but it wasn’t that at all; instead, it was a weird, surreal account of one woman’s refusal to live according to society’s expectations, represented first by her refusal to eat meat, then by her abstaining from food altogether. The three-part novel ends with its protagonist, Yeong-hye, being committed to a mental institution, but by this point the reader is inclined to identify with Yeong-hye rather than the society in which she lives—she’s not crazy; everyone else is.

Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature in October, leading me to revisit The Vegetarian. As I read the articles praising Kang, I was also reminded of a controversy surrounding The Vegetarian that I only faintly remembered, how after it had won the Booker, criticisms of the English translation appeared, claiming that the English translator, Deborah Smith, had mistranslated many aspects of the original Korean text.

I’m not a translator, but I read in multiple languages and I find discussions of translation fascinating, not only because they are rare, but also because there is no agreed upon approach to translation. Too often when a translation appears we read in reviews or promotional copy that the translation is “flawless” or “spectacular” or “elegant.” As a reader, I roll my eyes when I see what I consider to be empty platitudes. How do you know? I want to say. There is usually no explanation. Seldom do we see someone criticize a translation outright, which makes the case of The Vegetarian so interesting. The explanation for this, perhaps, is because of the precarity of literary translation as a viable occupation. It’s simply not worth it to criticize a translation as a fellow translator (the only people qualified to judge) when it might prevent you from obtaining a future job. Literary translators are already underpaid and disrespected by the literary establishment, constantly fighting for recognition (first editions of the The Vegetarian did not feature Smith’s name on the cover, but a Google Image search reveals that recent editions do, at least in the US), and there is also the threat of AI and machine translation; all this encourages translators to champion and support one another rather than criticize publicly. The exception of The Vegetarian can be explained by the fact that it won the Man Booker International, rendering it fair game, and that the main critic of the translation, Tim Parks, is an established and well-respected translator who doesn’t have to worry about his next job in the way a lesser-known translator might.

Parks’ criticism focused on the inconsistent style of The Vegetarian in English. As he couldn’t read Korean, he judged the novel on its own merits in English, looking at “the relationship between content and style” and finding fault with both Smith’s translation and what he imagined to be Kang’s original prose, speculating as to which of them was responsible for certain formal choices. I’m sure this review upset some in the translation field, but for me—a curious reader with no sides to pick—I found it to be an imaginative and thought-provoking piece of criticism. I wish more people analyzed translations like Parks does.

A different approach was taken by other critics. The statistic that “10.9% of the first part of the novel was mistranslated” came up in various articles, apparently the result of research conducted by a South Korean university. These researchers analyzed the English text against the Korean text—unlike Parks—but it’s not clear to me that their results were more fruitful than his. Assigning a percentage to show how much something has been mistranslated seems like a misguided approach, and I can’t imagine any translator taking such a statistic seriously. It fundamentally misunderstands how translation works—there are no right or wrong choices, only choices that are better or worse. No two translations are the same, and the classics are continually re-translated—there is not one translation that is 100% correct, whatever that would mean, and there can be multiple translations that are good in different ways.

In my reading about the translation controversy, I discovered a French version of The Vegetarian that was the result of a collaboration between a Korean translator (Jeong Eun-Jin) and a French one (Jacques Batilliot). What I’d like to do here is compare the French version with the English version and note where there are interesting and revealing differences. My approach will be similar to that of Parks: I can’t read Korean, so I can’t compare the accuracy or faithfulness of the translations. Instead, I will examine where the respective translations deviate from each other in order to highlight stylistic differences. I don’t wish to relitigate the controversy or assign some sort of rating or score to either translation; I simply wish to explore the act of translation, understand it better, and allow the reader to do the same. My approach has a slight problem, however, which is that I will have to translate the French into English to allow you, the reader, to make sense of the differences in the two translations. I have two options: I can translate from the French myself, and thus risk altering it to conform to my own style; or I can use DeepL to translate (widely regarded as the best translation software), which might suggest that machine translation is somehow neutral and objective, although it isn’t. Neither solution is ideal, but I’ve decided on using DeepL, which will work well enough to give a literal translation and allow us to see drastic differences while ignoring subtle ones. I will provide the French text in a footnote.

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The first part of the novel is narrated by Yeong-Hye’s husband.

In the English version, he tells us that he’s “always inclined toward the middle course in life.”

In the French version, he says that he’s “always shied away from things that seemed too good for [him].”¹

Immediately we notice a difference. In the English, the husband, simply referred to as Mr. Cheong, has made a conscious choice toward conformity, he has “inclined toward” it.

In the French, he may be an anonymous, average man, but this is not something he’s sought out; instead, his behavior seems to be the result of a sense of inadequacy or shame—he believes he doesn’t deserve good things. Instead of actively choosing as he does in the English, Mr. Cheong “shies away” (se garder); the two translations present opposing characterizations of Mr. Cheong—active in the English, passive in the French.

Next Mr. Cheong tells the reader about the women he has chosen not to pursue throughout his life.

In the English: “As for women who were pretty, intelligent, strikingly sensual, the daughters of rich families—they would only have served to disrupt my carefully ordered existence.”

In the French: “The pretty ones, the smart ones, the overly ostentatiously attractive ones, or even those from wealthy families intimidated me.”²

Again there is a striking difference. In the English, Mr. Cheong appears to be more self-centered and manipulative—he has “carefully ordered” his life—while in the French, we see that he is “intimidated” (the French uses the cognate), and that his actions are the result of the sense of inferiority he has. In just two lines, Mr. Cheong comes to be seen as more of a weak, mediocre man in the French, whereas in the English we are more likely to regard him as sinister and manipulative.

Here is the last line of the introductory section to part one:

In the English: “Until a certain day last February, when I came across my wife standing in the kitchen at daybreak in just her nightclothes, I had never considered the possibility that our life together might undergo such an appalling change.”

In the French: “Before that dawn last February when I discovered my wife in her nightdress, standing in the kitchen, I'd never imagined that our life could change, even just a little.”³

The key difference here is the word “appalling,” which implies judgement on the part of Mr. Cheong. In the English, we can see that he strongly disapproves of Yeong-Hye’s actions, while in the French, we are unaware of Mr. Cheong’s judgement. He seems more passive, unable to understand the changing nature of his circumstances and powerless to resist it.

Further examples strengthen the different portrayals of Mr. Cheong in the two versions.

After Yeong-Hye throws out all the meat and animal products from the house, Mr. Cheong rushes off to work but plans his actions for the evening.

In the English: “I told myself that somehow or other I had to leave the office early today (never mind that in the several months since I’d switched to my new position there hadn’t been a single day where I’d got off before midnight), and steeled myself for a confrontation.”

Could we imagine the French Mr. Cheong “steeling himself for a confrontation?”

In the French: “I just said to myself: ‘Anyway, I'll be home early tonight. It's been months since I've been back before midnight, since I changed jobs.’”⁴

It’s not there, not even the idea translated another way. The only explanation is that “steel[ing] myself for a confrontation” was either added in the English or removed from the French. In both cases, it changes the way we understand Mr. Cheong and further reinforces the differences in his character in the English and French versions.

Another example—Mr. Cheong comments on the reasons his wife has become a vegetarian:

In the English: “As far as I was concerned, the only reasonable grounds for altering one’s eating habits were the desire to lose weight, an attempt to alleviate certain physical ailments, being possessed by an evil spirit, or having your sleep disturbed by indigestion. In any other case, it was nothing but sheer obstinacy for a wife to go against her husband’s wishes as mine had done.”

In the French: “It wasn't to lose weight, nor to cure a disease; nor was she possessed by who knows what spirit. She wanted to change her diet after a nightmare! And she was stubborn, indifferent to her husband's efforts to dissuade her.”⁵

Compare “sheer obstinacy for a wife to go against her husband’s wishes” to “she was stubborn, indifferent to her husband’s efforts to dissuade her.” In the English, the husband espouses a retrograde, patriarchal worldview, not proclaiming on just his own marriage but on all marriages, while in the French, the husband limits himself to commenting on his particular marriage, and seems to show more of a caring view than a domineering one.

One more example in this vein comes from the second section of the book, when Mr. Cheong says:

In the English: “She was always so submissive—outwardly, at any rate. And for a woman who wasn’t quite all there to start with to be taking medication every day, well, she’s bound to get worse, and that’s all there is to it.”

In the French: “She seems to have come to her senses, but it's only an appearance. She's had that lost look for a long time, and the medication she has to take every day hasn't helped. I'm telling you, she's not cured!”⁶

The use of “submissive” in the English is a loaded word, evoking the stereotype of a traditional woman, and similarly to the previous example, highlighting Mr. Cheong as a backwards man. This sentence, however, does not seem to exist in the French.

With these examples, it may seem that I am attempting to rehabilitate the character of Mr. Cheong. This is not the case. In both the French and the English, Mr. Cheong is a bad husband who does terrible things to his wife. He rapes her (this section also varies greatly in the translations) and later, abandons her. He is not a good man. Yet what type of man does these things? In the English, Mr. Cheong is a manipulative, controlling man—a villain who refers to his wife using clichéd language. As a character, he is flat and two-dimensional, and the novel itself borders on the melodramatic. In the French, he is something more sinister because he’s not evil; he’s an ordinary man. His desire to dominate his wife results from feelings of his own inadequacy, and, perhaps, his inability to perform the role of a male in traditional Korean society.

Much has been made of Kang’s critique of gender in The Vegetarian and in the way she highlights the subjugated place of women in a Korea that remains to a large extent a traditional, patriarchal society. This type of society has harmful effects for men as well, in particular the mediocre men who fail to live up to what is expected of them, which is the case for both Mr. Cheong and the husband of Yeong-Hye’s sister, who is the focus of the second part of the novel. In turning Mr. Cheong into a caricature, the English version allows the reader to see him simply as one bad man, but in portraying him more as a sort of everyman in the French version, The Vegetarian reaches a deeper level of social critique, showing how ordinary people are capable of evil acts. Regardless of whether one translation or the other is more accurate with regard to the source text—a judgement I can’t make—the French version is the more profound novel.

1. “Je m’étais toujours gardé de ce qui me paraissait trop bien pour moi.”

2. “Les jolies, les intelligentes, les trop ostensiblement séduisantes, ou encore celles issues d’une famille riche m’intimidaient.”

3. “Avant cette aube de février dernier où j’ai découvert ma femme en chemise de nuit, debout dans la cuisine, je n’avais jamais imagine que notre vie pourrait changer, ne serait-ce qu’un petit peu.”

4. “Je me suis contenté de me dire : ‘En tout cas, ce soir, je vais rentrer tôt. Cela fais des mois que je ne suis pas revenue avant minuit, depuis que j’ai change de poste.’”

5. “Ce n’était pas pour maigrir, ni pour guérir d’une maladie ; elle n’était pas non plus possédée par je ne sais quell esprit. Elle voulait changer son régime alimentaire à la suite d’un cauchemar ! Et elle s’entêtait, indifférente aux efforts de son mari pour l’en dissuader.”

6. “Elle semble revenue à la raison, mais ce n’est qu’une apparence. Ça fait longtemps qu’elle a cet air égaré et les médicaments qu’elle doit prendre tous les jours n’ont rien arrangé. Je vous dis qu’elle n’est pas guérie !”