Eat Delicious Sand

It's time for fun with foreign languages! Or, more accurately, fun with translations/interpretations! I may have already mentioned some of this, but I find it hilarious and keep returning to it for amusement.

To kick things off, I'd like to share this translation segment from a speech by Korean President Roh (is actually "Noh;" not sure which English speaker screwed up that one) at the commencement ceremony of the Korea Third Military Academy:

"I offer my wholehearted congratulations on your graduation. Today, you are commissioned honorable ROK Army officers. You have successfully completed the difficult course. I am proud of your manly appearance. All of you would become the cornerstones defending our land. Your presence really is assuring to us all."

I hope there weren't any female graduates in that class.

Anyway, something you need to know about the Korean language to understand/appreciate the following examples is that many words in Korean are made up of syllables from other (sometimes related, sometimes not) words and fused together. For instance, the Korean word for "labor" is (Romanized spelling) "no-dong" (very funny, Mr. Koelman, but the ‘o’ is long) and the word for "union" is "jo-hap,” thus the word for "labor union" is "no-jo."

Even knowing what that means for the Korean way of thinking about words, it still amazes me that they assume English words can be broken up the same way. My favorite so far is the word "sandwich" being cut down to "sand." There's a sign at one eatery that cheerily invites you to "Eat Delicious Sand!"

Another one is that they use certain sounds from their language inappropriately in English words. The best example of this is the silent 'e' at the end of many English words. Instead of a "silent" sound, which they are perfectly capable of using, they pronounce the 'e': "sandwichie," "oranjie," and so on. They also put diphthongs in strange places: "milkshuake," "pishui" (that's "fish;" they have no 'f' sound). And because of the lack of 'f,' words like "Fanta" become "Hwanta" and "French fries" become "hurenchy huraies."

And then there are the situations that are just plain weird translations, due to different cultural connotations attached to words. I'm talking about walking down the street and seeing a business named "With" (is it a restaurant? a cafe? what?) or "Palace Own."

What really gets me is that they think it's right, and no one seems to bother to tell them it's wrong. I want to know who told them it was that way in the first place. I suppose it could be any number of Koreans who are teaching other Koreans English (obviously incorrectly!). That really calls attention to another aspect of the Korean mentality: if it's cheaper, it's better -- even if it's NOT better. They'll take a terribly erroneous Korean tutor for English over an accurate native English speaker who charges more.

Still, most Koreans who know some (proper) English are doing better than I am with Korean.

Of course, some of these idiosyncrasies are endearing. The lack of a 'z' means "crazy" becomes "crayjee," and back-translations (words borrowed from English, spelled phonetically with Hangeul characters, then translated back to English) confuse our 'z' and 'j' sounds, resulting in "pazamas" and "Mazellan."

That crayjee Mazellan, always wearing pazamas, eating hurenchy huraies and sheeping (sipping) an oranjie milkshuake.