According to the Korean Foundation’s 2021 Global Hallyu Status report, which analyzes the Korean Wave phenomenon, there were 157 million Hallyu fans across 116 countries and regions that year. That represents a 17-fold increase in the 10-year span since 2012, when the foundation first started compiling statistics. Still, according to the 2022 Overseas Hallyu Survey put out by the Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE), the greatest hurdle facing the enjoyment of the many different varieties of Korean cultural content is a lack of good translations, followed by challenging Korean and unfamiliar terms. As the number of K-pop fans around the world skyrockets, there’s no doubt that translation has made it easier for them to cross borders and experience another country. Fan platform Weverse’s translation service is a good example. As of February 2023, some 57 million Weverse subscribers, or 90%, were international fans, and the service provides translations in 15 languages for this large group of users. When an artist makes a post, there’s no need for fans to seek out a separate translation app; the artist’s words will automatically be translated into the user’s preferred language if they’ve chosen the option, or otherwise then can simply click once on the post to see it in their language. Subtitles are also provided in real time for concerts—including BTS’s Yet To Come in Busan concert last October and TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s The Name Chapter: TEMPTATION comeback showcase in February—so fans around the world can enjoy the show together in Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Spanish, Indonesian and Thai. The articles in Weverse Magazine, which you’re currently reading, are likewise available in Korean, English and Japanese. In addition to the voluntary translations done by fans, it’s now become standard for companies and platforms that make K-pop content to provide translations for everything from live videos to print interviews. 

The translations for things like the posts artists make on Weverse and the subtitles for their live videos are automatically generated with machine translation, and while it can’t fully capture the intricacies of the original Korean, it nonetheless lowers the barrier for overseas K-pop fans. Machine translation has played a major role in allowing global fans to more quickly and easily consume K-pop content and communicate, but automatic translation alone isn’t enough. Machine translation actually ends up reminding us once more of the importance of translation with a human touch in the world of K-pop. LE SSERAFIM members SAKURA and HUH YUNJIN talked about the translation of their Weverse Magazine interviews during a STATIONHEAD listening party, saying, “The articles are really well translated,” and, “Even though I spoke in Korean, the translated version doesn’t read as awkward at all.” With all the small, detailed nuances that interviewees convey, their translations necessarily require that much more effort. It’s especially important that translations be high-quality for K-pop fans who want to fully absorb every single word their favorite artists say. If a translation is good, then good reactions from fans will follow (“The translator chose all the right words!” “I like how clear the translation is.” “You can tell the writer and translator really love the artist.”)

“Even though machine translation’s getting more and more clever, we believe that translations that can fully convey the human feeling and spirit are still in the realm of human translation,” Hyunah Koo, working alongside Philip Partington as English translators of K-pop content, said. As translators, they said they can undoubtedly feel the ever-increasing importance of professional translations. A good translation goes beyond simply interpreting a language; both the words themselves and the cultural context of two different countries must be taken into consideration, with attention paid to subtle nuances and changes in meaning when moving between two languages. Koo and Partington explained that some things that artists commonly say in interviews, like “manhi saranghae juseyo” or “gidaehae juseyo,” can come across as demanding if translated into English directly (“Look forward to it! Love me!”). They added that expressions like “deo noryeok-halgeyo” and “deo yeolsimhi halgeyo,” which might be translated literally as “I’ll put in more effort” and “I’ll try harder,” can suggest that the artist hasn’t been working hard up until now but will start working hard from now on, so instead the translation has to capture the sense of the original and show the speaker has always tried hard but will try even harder. Partington also noted how a native English speaker might interpret the same set of words quite differently from a Korean speaker. “You can write ‘third year of high school’ and any Korean will know it’s about going through an extremely difficult time, with no further explanation needed, whereas a foreigner might only catch it as a reference to one of the years you’re in high school.”

In an interview Jin did for Weverse Magazine, his words were translated into English as, “To COVID-19: Please get lost. (laughs)” Because his intention could have possibly been misconstrued into something standoffish, the translators “thought about Jin’s personality and how he might have said it, given he says a lot of silly and cute things but in a serious way.” According to Koo and Partington, “K-pop feels like an area where the fans who have been following artists with such affection for so long could even have more expertise than translators. In order to make sure that fans aren’t disappointed by something that wasn’t conveyed properly, we also study different content in order to have more expertise.” But they also worry “if we get too attached to the artist or get too into them, it might end up making the translation hard for non-fans to understand.” The two therefore “try to know what kind of people the artists are by checking out their original content and looking up interviews” while trying to maintain some distance as well, noting it’s also important to “translate in a way that new fans and potential fans don’t feel like they’re left out or that there’s any barrier, and that the translation feels natural.”

“We’re always let down when we can’t convey the artists’ dialects, intonation, puns and wordplay to international fans exactly the way they speak,” said a representative from HYBE’s Language Lab, the department that manages the company’s overall language services. It would be nice to keep their way of speaking exactly as it is, but “dialects can’t be translated exactly, and even if they do get translated, it’s hard to get across the context of any humor the way Koreans understand it.” They really would love to give long, detailed explanations about what makes certain funny expressions the artists use in their videos so amusing “so international fans can understand and laugh along,” but the fact is they come up against all kinds of space-related and technical restrictions inherent to translating videos, like character limits and line breaks. Though true of all types of translation, for those in the world of K-pop, which deals heavily in direct quotations where each and every part of their message is equally important, translators must possess not just linguistic knowledge but K-pop knowledge as well, and think carefully about how the words will come across to people who aren’t yet fans of K-pop as well.

In the global sensation Parasite, the major in document forgery at “Seoul National University” was translated as being at “Oxford” and “jjapaguri”—a mixture of two brands of ramyeon widely known in Korea—became “ram-don,” a portmanteau of “ramyeon” and “udon.” As in that film, when translating content destined for international markets, it’s crucial that the translators are able to convey the essence and nuances of what’s being said into another language. Hiroko Yazawa, a translator of K-pop content into Japanese, detailed one such experience from when she had to translate RM’s expression “Bibilly Hills” for a Weverse Magazine article. “No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t think of any Japanese term other than ‘tanomino tsuna’ [something you can trust in and rely on], which is used when you’re in a predicament or backed into a corner, but I was sure there must be a better expression that would perfectly fit the meaning RM was trying to express,” Yazawa explained. Then, while taking a break with some black tea, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe the tea is my own Bibilly Hills, and that’s how I was able to come up with ‘kokorono yoridokoro’ [an emotional pillar, something that gives life purpose].” It's a time-consuming process to consider the mindset of a speaker and bring a translation of their words from something that merely relays their meaning in stilted language to something that instead fully conveys the emotion behind them.

“First, I do research as I do a full translation,” Yazawa said. “Second, I check for anything missing or wrong while comparing it against the original. Third, I read it out loud to make sure it sounds natural in Japanese.” English translators Koo and Partington said they “sometimes talk things over for 10 to 15 minutes for one sentence, or one word,” because they feel “there’s no point in having a translation to begin with if it's wrong.” One K-pop fan explained how it’s specifically through translations that they’re able to enjoy the things they’re looking for: “From our perspective as foreigners, the content we get varies a lot depending on the translator’s choice of words.” It used to be that K-pop’s reach was mainly restricted to nonverbal elements like the songs, music videos and choreography when it came to fans abroad, but now fans across the globe have access to translated versions of their favorite artists’ interviews as soon as the original is released. Translators go through a more rigorous process than might first be apparent since there’s a great weight that comes with having so much influence. “There’s the refined translated version that people see, but there’s also a ridiculously chaotic working document midway through the process,” Koo noted with a laugh.

As the numbers show, K-pop has established itself as a massive industry with a worldwide following. But while the number of foreign fans has gone up 17-fold in the past decade, there’s been an equally substantial effort to help connect a wide range of people together so they can better enjoy it. Translation shows that K-pop is ultimately about making people happy as they share experiences and emotions together. That’s why HYBE’s Language Lab strives to provide “translations of the artists’ intended messages that can be readily understood by fans from different countries and cultures and that help fans easily grasp how the artists really feel, despite all the limitations.” Partington said he thinks “translation can broaden a person’s world—their tastes and understanding,” and that he tries to “translate in a way that lets K-pop fans feel like they’re not so different from the artists.” Koo said she can “understand how people feel touched by the artists they love, and love them so much that they check out the content over and over again until it’s dog-eared,” and that her aim when working is to “translate with deep sincerity for the fans, trying to resonate with how fans feel, too.” And Yazawa explained how she feels a sense of responsibility for the content she translates, even when a lot of times the translator’s name never shows, because “it’s enough for a translator so long as they can help fans geek out, even just a little bit.” This might also explain why some translators say they don’t want their existence to even be noticeable in their work. “I hope that, when fans are reading something, they’re thinking about the feel of the content itself, not of the translated version,” Koo said—as though what fans read isn’t a translation at all. While she said she worries about “being too quickly criticized if it’s not perfect for everyone,” she doesn’t ignore feedback, instead always listening with an open mind to try and get her translations as close to perfection as possible. Koo had a few more thoughts when asked whether there’s such a thing as a perfect translation. “I know that a perfect translation—one where everyone considers it the correct way—doesn’t exist, but still we try. I think that’s the ground rule we try to follow.”