Deborah Smith FRSL (born 15 December 1987) is a British translator of Korean fiction. She translated The Vegetarian by Korean author Han Kang, for which she and the author were co-winners of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.[1][2]
After graduating from the University of Cambridge,[3] Smith began learning Korean in 2009, after discovering that there were few translations into English of Korean literature.[4][5] In 2015, Smith founded Tilted Axis Press, a non-profit publishing house devoted to books that "might not otherwise make it into English."[6] She has been a research fellow at SOAS.[7]
In June 2018 Smith was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its "40 Under 40" initiative.[8]