Archaeological Translation: How to Translate Diasporic Korean Literature

Abstract Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko chronicles four generations of Zainichi (Koreans in Japan) from the colonial era to the 1980s. Its translation process remains enigmatic; Lee imagined the narrative in Korean and Japanese before writing the novel in English. Consequently, the English original and its two Korean translated versions produce divergent meanings. This article investigates the translational issues in the two Korean versions, questioning the hierarchical order between the original Anglophone text and its translations. Building upon postcolonial translation scholarship, we first examine restored dialects in the Korean versions that are absent in the English text, analyzing their intersection with discourses of class, gender, and ethnicity. Secondly, we compare the opening sentences of the three versions, unearthing distinct insights into colonial and postcolonial histories embedded within each text. By unsettling conventional notions of originality, this comparative analysis introduces a new framework termed “archaeological translation.” Through this lens, we critique Lee’s mode of representation that flattens cultural and historical specificity, while demonstrating how translated versions evolve into distinctive texts with their own historical, political, and cultural perspectives in the transnational age.