Haerin Shin
Abstract This essay examines how the translation application in Park Chan-wook’s Heŏjil kyŏlsim (Decision to Leave, 2022) functions as a narrative agent and framework for parametric mediation. Semantic entropy designates information loss when neural translation compresses multivalent meanings into probable outputs; yet this entropy proves generatively productive, creating new possibilities in gaps between languages. Close readings examine scenes where the app mistranslates Chinese into Korean, transforming affective complexity into anatomical literalism, imposing unwarranted honorifics, and reducing Confucian ethics to suit consumer preferences. The screenwriters deliberately crafted these failures; paradoxically, such errors generate meanings exceeding both languages. Drawing on Walter Benjamin, Lawrence Venuti, and neural translation research, this study shows how mistranslations illuminate both limitations and generative capacities in algorithmic and human understanding. These insufficiencies become narratively productive through a hermeneutics of irresolution: an interpretive mode refusing closure, locating meaning in interstices between competing translations. Characterizing this dynamic as parametric creativity, I argue that Decision to Leave transforms technical constraints into aesthetic method. As artificial intelligence increasingly mediates communication, the film reminds us of interstices arising from encounters between disparate entities: the tremor in voices, the weight of pauses, and the irreducible difference between heart as an organ and heart as feeling.