[KS] Foreign copy-editors and polishers in Pyongyang - and Seoul?

don kirk kirkdon at yahoo.com
Mon May 21 17:18:06 EDT 2012


Yes, really, since when are "cutesy....kids" as "nauseating," almost, as the rat images for Lee M.B.? For sure, they've got some "polishers" up there who're up on idiomatic English, as indicated in the passage presented by Scott. Would be interesting to know who they are, whether foreign or Korean, possibly Korean-American.
Don Kirk

--- On Mon, 5/21/12, Afostercarter at aol.com <Afostercarter at aol.com> wrote:


From: Afostercarter at aol.com <Afostercarter at aol.com>
Subject: Re: [KS] Foreign copy-editors and polishers in Pyongyang - and Seoul?
To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Date: Monday, May 21, 2012, 6:54 AM





Dear friends and colleagues,
 
Jim makes an important point. Foreign linguistic advisers
may get overridden - and by no means only in Pyongyang.
 
Our List surely includes some who have similarly proof-read
and polished in the other Korea, or are doing so right now.
I'd be interested to hear their views and experience.
 
This issue is almost as hardy a perennial as romanization.
But time and again one still runs across South Korean
websites, including those of large companies and official 
bodies, where the English just ain't right; sometimes badly so.
 
Thus the ROK transport ministry http://english.mltm.go.kr
proclaims on its homepage: "Make Happiness, Happy Creator".
Amen to that - but what on earth are they on about?
 
Then again, in one classic corporate case where Koreans 
dreamed up an 'English' product name, the LG Viewty 
has sold very well. (Viewty is in the eye of the veholder?)
 
- Another thing. English apart, why are so many corporate
and official South Korean websites festooned with cutesy birds and butterflies, winsome kids, cartoon characters and the like? 
Almost as nauseating, at the opposite end of the scale, as 
North Korea's bloody rats. (Perhaps I am hard to please.)
 
Kind regards
Aidan FC
 

Aidan Foster-Carter
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University, UK
 
E: afostercarter at aol.com     afostercarter at yahoo.com   W: www.aidanfc.net    
W in Korea:  http://web.archive.org/web/20090202080126/http://aidanfc.net/index.html
 
_______________
 
 
 
 
In a message dated 5/21/2012 08:02:22 GMT Daylight Time, jimhoare64 at aol.co.uk writes:
I agree that KCNA did not seem to use polishers, The FLPH laid off the remaining foreign staff while we were there in 2001-02 and thereafter seemed to relay on Koreans - no doubt this explains the odd language. 
But even when they did employ foreign staff, the Korean staff would often override what the native speakers had suggested.
On a slightly different note, what use would one make of photographs of such people if one had them? 
Jim Hoare



-----Original Message-----
From: Afostercarter <Afostercarter at aol.com>
To: koreanstudies <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
CC: jsburgeson <jsburgeson at yahoo.com>
Sent: Sun, 20 May 2012 18:34
Subject: Re: [KS] Foreign copy-editors and polishers in Pyongyang




Dear friends and colleagues,
 
Scott raises the question of native speakers of English (etc)
as copy-editors - also known as 'polishers' - in North Korea.
 
Having in the past recruited at least two people for such roles
- Michael Harrold, and the late Andrew Holloway http://www.aidanfc.net/a_year_in_pyongyang.html
- this is a topic about which I'm curious, but not up-to-date.
 
Michael, Andrew and others were hired by the DPRK
Foreign Languages Publishing House (FLPH). The texts
they worked on were mostly books, as best I recall.
 
By contrast, I've never heard of KCNA using foreigners.
My guess would be that they don't, given some stilted
expressions and the odd mistake.
 
For example, surely if a native English speaker were
involved they would have recommended a different word
- be it technical or colloquial - for "bottom hole" in the 
third sentence of the caption to the cartoon below.
 
There are other linguistic infelicities here as well,
not least the title. Either tear apart or tear to pieces,
but not tear apart to pieces.
 
(On the substance: In my article I likened doing the research
for this to wading through sewage. You can see why.)
 
- But back to polishers. FLPH still uses at least one, but he 
lives in Beijing. See an interesting interview with Paul White
at Tad Farrell's ever more indispensable NKNews:
http://www.nknews.org/2012/04/the-british-voice-of-kim-il-sung/
 
Kind regards
Aidan FC
 

Aidan Foster-Carter
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University, UK
 
E: afostercarter at aol.com     afostercarter at yahoo.com   W: www.aidanfc.net    
 
**************
 
>From http://www.kcna.kp/2mb/eindex.html (cartoon 5)
 


Tear Apart Lee Myung Bak to Pieces
The dirty hairy body of rat-like Myung Bak is being stabbed with bayonets. One is right in his neck and the heart has already burst open. Blood is flowing out of its filthy bottom hole. This is not too much to Lee as he committed only sordid acts of flunkeyism and treachery. And this is not all. It is the strong will and pledge of the army and people of the DPRK to tear apart Lee Myung Bak to pieces.
 
_______________
 
In a message dated 5/20/2012 11:27:17 GMT Daylight Time, jsburgeson at yahoo.com writes:




Thanks for the great article, Aiden! Did you have to put bandaids on your eye-balls after reading so much slashing, violent fulmination? 


Any chance you can dig up photos of some of the foreign devils who copy-edited this stuff in English? One wonders if they have PTSD by now; hopefully they were sharp enough to ask in advance to be paid in soju!




--- On Fri, 5/18/12, Aidan Foster-Carter <afostercarter at aol.com> wrote:


From: Aidan Foster-Carter <afostercarter at aol.com>
Subject: [KS] (no subject)
To: Koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
Date: Friday, May 18, 2012, 9:56 AM



Dear friends and colleagues,
 
Just to let you know that the new issue of Comparative Connections
- the thrice-yearly online journal published by Pacific Forum-CSIS -
includes what I think is the first full account and detailed analysis
in English of North Korea's ongoing bloodthirsty fulminations
against South Korea and especially its President, Lee Myung-bak.
 

In over 40 years of following North Korea, I've read tons of rich
DPRK invective - but never anything as bizarre and nasty as this.
(They don't much care for Park Geun-hye, either; for all that she
dined with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang less than a decade ago.)
 
In case of interest, this article is freely available to all at
http://csis.org/files/publication/1201qnk_sk.pdf
The full issue, which as ever also has three further articles on Korea
covering the two Koreas' relations with the US, China and Japan,
can be accessed at http://csis.org/program/comparative-connections
 
All good wishes
Aidan FC
 

Aidan Foster-Carter
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University, UK
 
E: afostercarter at aol.com     afostercarter at yahoo.com   W: www.aidanfc.net   
 
 

 

 
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