[KS] Re: English in Korea

[Frank Hoffmann]

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/news/2000/04/__04/20000403_0418.htm

Kim Mi-hui's article (link above) is indeed worth reading!
I may add that most of the foreign journalists were kicked out of the 
Biennale's pre-opening on March 28, and myself and others were not 
even able to get into the press conference that same evening until it 
was over. Two curators (!) needed 30 minutes and many phone calls in 
trying to let us in. Please imagine: We are staying in front of the 
press room and the guard refuses to let us in in spite of two 
Biennale curators asking him to do so. That wasn't exactly a language 
problem. It was Korean bureaucracy at its finest.

Other than complaining that such things are not perfect in Korea, in 
spite of its new (still very new) economic wealth, I wonder if we 
could discuss were this comes from, and why there seems to be no 
change -- things in this respect may actually have gotten worse after 
the action-oriented rule of Park Chung Hee ended? I don't think the 
issue is English language. There were never more people in Korea who 
speak good English than today.

Frank



>As a companion-piece to that, I would like to add a reference to Kim
>Mi-hui's article on the opening of this year's Kwangju Biennale,
>"Translation problems plague Kwangju," in the Korea Herald a couple of
>weeks ago. The writer is a Staff Reporter, not some bothersome
>foreigner, and she sadly writes:
>
>"The room (for the international press conference) went dead silent
>after the first sentence of the opening speech by Oh Kwang-soo, the
>director of the Biennale Foundation, as no one could understand the
>English interpreter. A young woman with a clear lack of grammatical and
>pronunciation skills was translating all the simple ideas ("I'm sorry
>we're late") and ignoring all the complex (i.e. exhibition themes, and
>the titles of speakers). Minutes into the meeting, the foreign
>journalists had put their pens down, and simply gazed at the interpreter
>in total amazement. "I have no idea what she was saying," a reporter
>from Germany said, shaking his head after the press conference."
>
>The full text is at
>http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/news/2000/04/__04/20000403_0418.htm
>
>Ken Kaliher ends up shaking his head more or less in despair.
>
>Is there really no hope? I just thought I would ask. I know there's no
>solution.
>Brother Anthony
>Sogang University, Seoul
>http://www.sogang.ac.kr/~anthony

-- 
        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Frank Hoffmann * 4903 Manitoba Dr.#202 * Alexandria, VA 22312 * USA
E-MAIL: hoffmann at fas.harvard.edu  *  Fax: (520) 438-4890
W W W : http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hoffmann/


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%