The art of translating pansori: finding the right word in French

Lee Ja-ram's 'Nun, Nun, Nun' [LG Arts Center]

"Jetige heoujjeok heoujjeok heoujjeok heoujjeok heoujjeok … mogajiman nun bakkeuro naon chae saekaman ge … ." (Lee Ja-ram, 'Nun, Nun, Nun')

Breathless tension, an onomatopoeic word repeated five times — pansori is a feast of the Korean language. A howling wind, swirling snow, and the desperate struggle of a horse buried in a snowdrift are rendered in language that awakens every cell in the body. Can a French audience feel that same tension?

"No matter how refined the translation, it cannot fully preserve the linguistic nuances and flavor of the Korean language," said Lee Ja-ram, a pansori performer and creator. "But the translation has been refined to a level where we can trust it completely on stage — and that is what has made it possible to bring pansori to international audiences."

Taking pansori to the world requires more than a great work. It demands the craft of translation — crossing what practitioners call a "one-centimeter barrier" of language and culture — to present pansori as a contemporary theatrical art that reaches audiences everywhere. That is why an invisible battle is always being fought behind the scenes.

Lee Sang-suk, a producer at Ipgwason Studio, a creative pansori company, said translating pansori means far more than moving words from one language to another. "It is the process of developing a language that can explain the aesthetics of a work, its production approach, and the creator's intent to audiences and programmers from other cultures," she said.

The role of the translator cannot be overstated. "Pansori and changgeuk are genres in which music, language, and the relationship with the audience are tightly interwoven — yet they are relatively unfamiliar to local audiences abroad," Lee said. "That makes it essential to think carefully about what to convey and how. In that sense, the role of intermediaries — translators, dramaturgs, and producers — is also critically important."

Ipgwason Studio's 'Guguseon Saramdeul' [Ipgwason Studio]

'Strip away more' — Han Yu-mi and Hervé Péjaudier's translation of empty space

The approach to translating pansori and changgeuk has shifted with the times. "In the past, translation amounted to little more than literal word-for-word subtitles — informational captions," said one industry insider. "Now the direction is to preserve as much of the Korean expression and stage language as possible." The ability to present these painstakingly crafted works on the global stage owes much to the unseen efforts of translators at home and abroad.

Two names appear consistently whenever pansori is brought to international stages: Korean translator Han Yu-mi and her husband, French director Hervé Péjaudier. The couple have been central figures in what many consider a golden era of Korean classical literature and pansori translation in France.

They have translated traditional works including "Sugungga," "Simcheongga" and "Sugyeongnangja-ga," as well as creative productions such as Lee Ja-ram's "Sacheon-ga" and "Ibangineui Norae," the National Changgeuk Company's "Byeon Gangsoé Jeom Jjikgo Ongnyeo," and Ipgwason Studio's pansori fairy-tale series "Andersen," "Pansori Les Misérables Tomak Sori Series 3 — Gavroche" and "Guguseon Saramdeul." Their translations have been published through the French-language specialist publisher Imago as part of its Korean classics series, "Scènes coréennes."

At the heart of Han and Péjaudier's translation philosophy is a rejection of one-to-one dictionary equivalence. Words that are uniquely Korean in feeling — untranslatable terms carrying the values of han (sorrow) and haehak (humor) — are reimagined using the sounds and theatricality native to the French language.

"They are also translating 'Nun, Nun, Nun' for the Avignon performance, and I trust them without question," Lee Ja-ram said. Ipgwason Studio noted that the team always holds a conversation about the work before translation begins. "When Han visits Korea, she watches the performance and discusses the work freely — sharing thoughts on what is different from previous productions and where the work is headed — before she starts translating," a studio representative said.

Lee Ja-ram's 'Ibangineui Norae' [Wansung Playground]

What makes the couple's translations distinctive is their radical compression — or outright omission — of subtitle text. The goal is to let French audiences intuitively grasp, at a glance, the space between the lines of a Korean lyrical text, the performer's breath, and the poetic beauty of the original.

"In French, something that takes one English sentence can sometimes expand into three," Lee Ja-ram said. "But because they understand the difference between French and the flavor of Korean pansori, they compress it back into one sentence. They preserve the aesthetics of empty space so that audiences are not so busy reading subtitles that they miss the performer's gestures and voice — leaving room for the audience to listen fully to the singer's vocal sounds."

Another hallmark of their work is a constant search for elevated French words whose sounds flow with natural musicality — a way of compensating in French for the sonic texture of the original Korean.

One scene has become legendary: when master singer Kim Gyeong-a cried out in Korean at the moment Sim Bong-sa opens his eyes, Hervé Péjaudier performed a simultaneous French interpretation on the spot. French audiences responded with a torrent of cheers and tears. It was a moment in which pansori breathed and lived in a foreign tongue.

Three stages to today's language — translation as a second act of creation

Pansori translation today is in a state of constant evolution. It has moved beyond literal rendering of lyrics to become a second collaborative act of creation — one that reconciles the musical cadence of the voice and the performative breath of the singer within the structures of another language. The translation process used by Ipgwason Studio for "Ginginbam," a bilingual pansori work set to premiere at the Sydney Opera House this fall, is notably precise.

Ipgwason Studio follows a three-stage translation process for its creative works. "Works that blend traditional pansori with original creation require even more intensive translation work," producer Lee said.

A rehearsal scene from 'Ginginbam,' a bilingual pansori work set to premiere at the Sydney Opera House in September [Ipgwason Studio]

First, the creative team rewrites archaic Korean into contemporary Korean. A translator then renders that into English and French. Finally, the singer reads the translated text aloud — because only then can the rhythm, breath, and nuance of the words be properly tested and preserved.

"Translating pansori into another language is never easy — especially for works like 'Guguseon Saramdeul' or 'Ginginbam,' where the flavor of the words, the rhythm, and the singer's breath are everything," Lee said. "I don't believe a translation can ever be identical to the original, but we try to reconstruct within another language what the work is saying, what emotions it wants to convey, and what experience the audience will have."

That process has carried over into "Ginginbam" as a bilingual pansori. Lee Gyeong-hu, the work's translator, said the source material presented its own challenges. "Both the original novel and the script appear to be written in plain language on the surface, but there are many words that are simple in structure yet carry real weight," she said. "There is a lot of language you want to press down and sit with, rather than let pass by — so I tried to faithfully carry that emotional gravity into the English words."

A new role has also emerged in the creative pansori scene: the "pansori-turg." Like a dramaturg in theater, this person analyzes the work — but with the specific task of ensuring that the translated foreign language flows naturally over the rhythms of pansori, coordinating language and music together.

Precise translation work can also serve as a direct gateway to international stages. An English-subtitled video of "Guguseon Saramdeul," produced through a collaboration between the Arts Council Korea's arts archive and Arirang TV, became a stepping stone for introducing the work to theater programmers abroad. An official at the archive said the subtitled video led to a significant number of inquiries from France and Belgium about touring with Ipgwason Studio. "We were able to introduce the subtitled performance video in depth to overseas contacts," producer Lee said.

A showcase of the bilingual pansori 'Ginginbam' at the Sydney Opera House in Australia [Ipgwason Studio]

Even so, pansori remains one of the most difficult performing arts to translate. The beauty and flavor of the Korean language, its rhythmic patterns and audience call-and-response, and the nuances of its sound-mimicking and motion-mimicking words cannot be fully conveyed. And yet audiences around the world weep, laugh, and call back.

"The goal of pansori translation is not to replicate Korean as it is, but to allow audiences who speak a different language to experience the same emotions and connections that we do," producer Lee said.

Ultimately, pansori translation is the precise foundational infrastructure that erases language barriers while preserving the genre's identity. "We cannot fully capture the flavor, beauty, and nuance of the Korean language in pansori," said one industry insider, "but through the translation process, we can build an ecosystem in which pansori breathes on fully equal terms with audiences around the world. Translation and the professionals who carry it out are the key to freeing pansori from Korea's past heritage and making it a universal art that audiences everywhere can experience as a living, contemporary form."

shee@heraldcorp.com