Very few books get translated into English. If something does get translated, one can assume it’s among the best a culture has created. The novel Petty Lies by the South Korean author Sulmi Bak is a surprising choice for a translated novel unless there’s truly nothing better coming out of South Korea than this semi-childish effort at creating a psychological thriller.
The structure of Petty Lies is badly thought-out. The big reveal at the end is fumbled. The motivations are flimsy, the dialogues are infantile, and the most interesting thing about the plot is the characters’ obsession with test scores. These are people who are really really into text scores. The test scores are so important that they also become characters. Especially since the actual characters are boring.
There’s always a chance that the translator is incompetent and made the author sound like a moron. But even assuming that the translator here is an absolute hack, the novel is still painfully weak.
Clarissa's Blog 
The Nobel prize for literature 2024 went to a Korean authoress, Han Kang, whom nobody had heard of before unless one was into very niche literature. Since then, the world of publishing has seen what can only be called a “deluge” of Korean literature in translation.
As a translator myself I’m very happy for those valiant colleagues who now have the chance to work with a so-called minority language. However, most of what I have seen is of very poor quality in terms of literary value, but since it “sells” it gets translated anyway.
Let’s also remember that in EU countries there are funds (bursaries, block grants and the like) made available by the EU and by the individual countries concerned to help publishers defray the costs of translation, which, to my mind, indicates that these translations only exist because such books are published as a loss-making enterprise sustained by public funds, ie taxpayers’ money.
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“in EU countries there are funds… to help publishers defray the costs of translation”
Which I think is a good thing.
Some countries also have cultural funds to help translators. Years ago I read of a Swedish program that brought translators to Sweden to meet and spend time with the authors whose work they translated.
In general the more translations the better, especially since the longterm verdict on specific works often differs from initial reception.
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It’s true, EU gives gigantic funds for translations. Many such grants are offered through universities. I have a group of colleagues in Spain who are competing for a €250,000 grant to translate from Ukrainian.
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I didn’t read Han Kang because, from the reviews, it sounded in the vein of “third-worlders have discovered Western feminism and are trying to cosplay it “
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