Contemporary Thai author Prabda Yoon’s short-story collection Kwam Na Ja Pen is translated here under the title Pen in Parentheses. The thirteen-story collection won Yoon the prestigious S.E.A. Write Award in 2002 and forms an important part of the author’s work. Yoon is considered by many as not only the voice of a new generation of Thais that grew up in a fast-urbanizing country, but also as the writer who popularized postmodern narrative techniques increasingly seen in contemporary Thai literature. The translation is accompanied by an introduction that provides a background on the author and the recent movements in Thai writing, as well as considers the poststructuralist underpinnings of Yoon’s work. In particular, because the stories in Pen in Parentheses embody the ideas expounded by Roland Barthes in “The Death of the Author,” they show the writer’s reluctance to claim authority, and this resistance in Yoon’s writing comports with his place as a “native informant” within the framework of cultural studies. The introduction concludes that his “informant” status makes a hybrid translation approach that mixes domesticating and foreignizing elements appropriate for the translation of these stories into English. Finally, the introduction discusses some key challenges of translating a work of Thai literature into English.

Key Terms: Prabda Yoon, Thai literature, translating from Thai, native informant, hybrid translation approach