[KS] dropping McCune-Reischauer for 20th/21st c. personal names

[Gari Keith Ledyard]

Dear Frank,
	In romanization, the big interest is that people make a sincere
effort to follow the rules, and do the romanizing correctly.  As to the
periods and situations in which we should use a standard romanization,
that is a matter for the individual writer or scholar to determine.  I
understand what you're saying, and do not doubt that the kind of
romanization decisions that you must make in dealing with the globalized
world of contemporary art might rule out using an identity-obliterating
romanization.  But this is for you, the individual critic or scholar, to
decide.  It is not something for which we have to make a standard rule for
everybody, or for which we must must establish definitions of historical
time.  There are no czars here, and we need no ukases.  Nobody is
going to run you out of Korean Studies if you write "Paik Nam-June."
Romanization is hard enough in Korean without having an extra
set of rules for when we should and should not use it.  A scholar like
yourself should do what you have to do, based on your own good reasons,
and the rest of us must respect you for that.  But please, no more rules
and regulations.  I apologize to you and the list for saying your proposal
was silly.

Gari Ledyard


On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Frank Hoffmann wrote:
> 
> Many thanks for the 'silly and counter-productive' -);  But still 
> don't quite get it. This was not, of course, not speaking about 
> quoting printed material. There are *strict* bibliographic rules on 
> how to quote publications, and none of the standard bibliographic 
> styles would allow to change the name of the author, even if he 
> appears as "Kimm" on the title page. So this cannot be a discussion 
> about how to quote printed material, as there is no room for such an 
> discussion.
> My whole argument tried to take deal with the fact that we are living 
> in an age of globalization where national and cultural borders, 
> borders of identity, are not only shifting but also getting 
> redefined. Is -- my example in my first mail -- Nikky S. Lee Korean 
> or American (in spite of not having a Green Card or passport)? Maybe 
> neither is an adequate description of what makes her identity. (This, 
> by the way, is great example because she plays with group identities 
> in her art work.) Now, if we consider for a moment that she would not 
> be labeled "artist" because the NYT says so, but that she would be a 
> very famous business women constantly referred to in the Financial 
> Times, would we then refer to her as Yi Sûk-hûi?
> Time lines are silly, you say. I don't see why that would be silly -- 
> times have changed in the sense that cultural borders (and thereby 
> identity) have been redefined and are constantly redefined (unless 
> you were referring to printed material, were this would indeed make 
> no sense). .... And YES, sure should we use McCune-Reischauer as much 
> as possible, I was not questioning that.
> 
> Frank
> 
>