With Gratitude to the LTI Korea

LTI Korea Banner Image
KLTI

My wife and I are still enjoying the after-effects of the good news, partly from receiving congratulatory messages such as this one from the Director of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, Professor Seong-Kon Kim:

Dear Prof. Hodges,

I am sure you know already that your (and your wife's) translation of Yi Kwangsu's The Soil published by Dalkey Archive Press has been selected as one of "The WLT's 75 Notable Translations 2013." My heartfelt congratulations on the honor!

LTI Korea is excited to hear the news and greatly encouraged by it. Needless to say, we are very grateful to you.

Cheers,

Seong-Kon Kim

We were honored by the congratulations, but I felt that the gratitude should really be from us to the LTI Korea, so I replied as follows:

Dear Prof. Kim,

Thank you for the note of congratulations. We had indeed heard the news. My wife was alerted by someone at the LTI Korea early yesterday, but I was so busy that I didn't check my mail and only found out after 3 in the afternoon, when I arrived home and heard a brief report from my wife just before she left for a meeting.

I wasn't at first sure what to make of the news, for I was unfamiliar with the WLT. But I blogged on the honor (I'll blog on anything, you know) and linked to my blog entry where the scholars on the Milton List could access it. The Milton scholars' hearty congratulations made me realize that this must really be a big deal (to borrow an expression from your KH column this week).

I hope this recognition will be of some benefit to the LTI Korea, for without the translation grant, my wife and I would never have been able to undertake such a large-scale project. Please let us know if we can be of some assistance to the LTI Korea.

Best Regards,

Jeffery Hodges

Let me underline this point: Without LTI Korea's strong support through a sizable grant, our translation would never have even been undertaken, so much of the praise should go to this institute and to its Director, Professor Seong-Kon Kim, for their support.