There are fewer than five, possibly three, full-time literary translators working from Korean to English in the entire world today, and Anton Hur has been one of them since 2017. As a freelancer, he has no institution to lean against, as he is not an academic, celebrity, or rich. What authority, if any, can a translator claim in the maelstrom of powerful interests that surround a translated manuscript? When the translator is not the author, agent, editor, or even the marketing department at the publisher, what are the ways in which the translator’s authority is questioned, denigrated, or denied altogether? Is “translator authority” an oxymoron? Anton Hur relates the many ways his authority and expertise as a translator have been challenged–"in publishing, in the media, and even in classrooms where he teaches–"to discuss the idea of translator authority and the translator as author and what it means for translators to “know their place.”
