[KS] Revised Romanization Detailed Guidelines?

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear Dennis, and All:

My *impression* is that we are in a downward spiral. My *impression* is 
further that after the initial publication of the RR 2000 system hardly 
anyone seriously cares, EXCEPT those scholars in Asian studies outside 
of Korea who are pushed to adopt that system (e.g. as they or their 
institution receive funding from Korean government associated 
organization, or because they publish in Korea itself). Hyoungbae Lee 
just posted the link to the scanned version of the English language 
booklet _The Revised Romanization of Korean_, the scanned version of it 
at the National Institute of Korean Language website. This is a Korean 
government website, and as we see they do not even deem it necessary to 
put up a text one can actually read without performing some Yoga 
exercise (the document is turned 45 degrees to the right). That seems 
no coincidence. It continues. In terms of content there are other 
"quality" and scholarship issues. Not to repeat a discussion already 
completed in 1999/2000, but my point is, things have not improved ... 
we still see that old text up there, that has never been updated with 
any really complete romanization guide. On page 7 (PDF pagination) of 
that old guide we thus see such claims as: "(...) Kumkang and Hankuk, 
for 금강 and 한국 instead of Kŭmgang and Han-guk, as would have been 
correct according to the old system." "Han-guk," of course, is not the 
correct transcription according to McCune-Reischauer. And how many 
scholars in Korea do indeed follow the RR 2000 guide? While McC-R has 
been abolished in Korea, as before, everyone, including scholars, is 
now still using their personal rule of thumb guide instead of the new 
system -- that is, a mix between the new system and freehand 
interpretations of signs in the cloudy autumn sky. How professionally 
has the not-anymoe-so-new system been implemented? A Korean studies 
librarian at Princeton University wondering where to find an actual, 
up-to-date ruleset of this system, 16 years after it was implemented, 
is a good measure to get to a conclusion here. One side effect of the 
results of the implementation is that students no longer appropriately 
learn the "old" McC-R system, and that most, if not all (from what I 
see all) major Asian studies journals have by now gotten rather "loose" 
in terms of editing out transcription errors. THAT again distinguishes 
Korean studies publications from studies about Japan and China in 
rather unfortunate terms, making KS look like a field in its infancy -- 
a stage it had already overcome at the exact time the new RR system was 
introduced.

Not too long ago I stumbled over an article from, I think it was 2009 
or 2014 (cannot give you the reference now), that pointed out how the 
rules for romanizing personal names were again revised. I recall some 
examples from classical literature, e.g. how to romanize 심쳥전 -- with 
that female given name together or as two separate names, etc. All I 
recall now is that there were changes applied to the official system.


Regards,
Frank


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Frank Hoffmann
http://koreanstudies.com