Translator Hwang Seok-hee. Courtesy of Seensee Company

If you have seen the musical “Once” again, 11 years after its premiere in 2014, you cannot deny that “it became more interesting than before.” “Once” is based on the Irish film of the same name, in which a native Irish singer-songwriter, GUY, meets a Czech immigrant, GIRL, and they share a brief but intense musical and emotional connection. The set-up of the immigrant GIRL speaking broken Korean is the same as in the original, but the audience are more likely to break into laughter in the re-run.

Translator Hwang Seok-hee, who translated “Once,” said he was once told, “The re-run became wittier than the original. Did Hwang Seok-hee write the lines?” Hwang, who has been translating films for 20 years and has branched out into musical translations since working on “Something Rotten” in 2019, modestly calls the public's assessment that he is good at humorous translations “prejudice.” He said it is an image that was built up when he was nicknamed the “transcendent translator” for his great translation of swears in the film “Deadpool” (2016) into Korean.

“I'm a translator who feels obligated to translate what's in the script,” said Hwang, who we met in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on March 24. ”The script is funny, not the humor I added. I focused on finding British humor in every corner and delivering it.”

He said he values the intent of the original author the most, but he does not insist on direct translation. “British humor isn't really funny to us,” he said, “it's the kind of humor that's polite, but it's a punch in the gut.” He laughed, saying, ”I have a tendency to be obsessive about translating every little wit well, so I've done my best, but I don't know how the audience thinks about it.”

In the original, the scene where GIRL, her mother, and her Czech immigrant friends talk in broken English and fluent Czech is expressed in broken Korean and fluent Korean (with Czech subtitles appearing on the screen). “If we emphasize (the difference) too much, it can be caricatured, so I try to keep the line,” said Hwang. ”But I think it's a great device to maximize the humor in the work.”

For example, in the original script, GIRL”s lines, which are written with incorrect grammar throughout, are perfect in one scene. It is a scene where she applies for a loan at a bank, and it is so fluent that Hwang knew it was meant to be humorous with dramatic exaggeration. “Only when the setting that she has been speaking poor English accumulates, speaking at the bank in a sophisticated way (not to be discouraged) can be humorous,” Hwang said.

Hwang said he enjoyed working on “Once” more because it was a “musical with no lightly expendable characters.” He explained, “Even a bit-part character’s taste and humor are all in the text,” adding, “it becomes richer than the film.”

Actors Yoon Hyeong-ryeol (left) and Lee Ye-eun rehearse major scenes during a press event for the musical “Once” at the Shinhan Card Artium at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on February 26. Yonhap News

For Hwang, “Once” is also a work of great affection. He was in a band for nearly 10 years when he was in his 20s. Unusually for this project, he recorded a few of the guides himself and gave them to the crew. “Irish folk has a lot of chanting,” he said, ”and a lot of the lyrics don't have a one-to-one correspondence to the notes, so I also did like that.”

The theme song of “Once,” “Falling Slowly,” was a challenge because it is a well-known song. It was not easy to translate the lyrics, which feature a “sinking ship” as a symbol, into Korean. In the premiere, the lyrics translated as “It's sinking/ Hold on to me/ Before it's too late” were changed to “It's not too late/ Get on that boat/ Hold my hand.” “I tried to keep the image of the boat and convey the nuance that it's urgent, but if you get on now, you can go,” he said.

In “Ragland Road,” sung by GUY’s father Da, he also added his own interest. Having been a fan of Lee Jung-yeol, the actor who plays Da, since he was a singer, Hwang said, “I am a fan of him to know which syllable he has a nice vibration, so I was even more greedy,” adding, “I wanted to write lyrics that fit the folk spirit.”

Hwang is also looking forward to translating the premieres of the musicals "Lempicka" and "Frozen.” For him, who has a much longer career as a film translator, musical translation is still a fascinating experience.

“There is definitely an unbridgeable gap between the two languages. If you don't capture all the nuances, you may only be able to translate 80 percent of what you're willing to do. But in a performance, the actors sing and act, the director directs, and the choreographer moves, and they fill in the blanks.”

“Once,” a musical that combines Hwang's witty translation with the actors' great acting, will run at the Shinhan Card Artium at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul until May 31.

Translator Hwang Seok-hee. Courtesy of Seensee Company