More mistranslation fun from the Korean papers.

Perhaps the papers should leave English-language news to reporters who actually understand the English language. Apparently a line about Korean swimmer Park Tae-hwan upsetting the favorite Grant Hackett to go on to win a gold medal was taken to mean that the Australian swimmer was angry with the Korean. An excerpt from a Seoul Shinmun article titled "호주언론 '박태환, 해켓을 화나게 했다,'" translated by Gerry Bevers in a comment to a Marmot's Hole post:

Most of Australian media barely reported news of Bak Tae-hwan’s gold-medal, but among them, one of Australia’s leading newspapers, “The Sydney Morning Herald,” reported, “News of Bak Tae-hwan’s gold medal made Australia’s gold medal hopeful Grant Hackett angry.”

Also, it made the sarcastic remark, “The Korean was spruiked going into the Games as ready to break the 2002 world mark, but qualified with a 3:41.86.

On the other hand, the newspaper expressed disappointment by saying, “Hackett finished an disappointing sixth place behind China’s Zhang Lin and America’s Jensen.”

In an interview with the newspaper Hackett expressed disappointment, “I guess this event was not what I was looking for,” and, “It would have been nice to stand on the medal podium.”

Bevers dug up some of the sources on which the Korean article was based. Here's one:

Korea’s world champion Park Tae-hwan, who upset Australian medal hope Grant Hackett to take gold in yesterday’s 400m freestyle, came in ahead of the mighty American.

And here's another:

“I guess it wasn’t the time that I was looking for,” Hackett, the silver medal winner in Athens four years ago, said after the race. “I would have liked to have been up on the medal podium, but it was a fast field today. I thought I had a bit more in me than that, but it didn’t come out unfortunately.

I have no idea what "spruiked" means, but judging from the context of the original article from August 10th I take it to mean "boasted":

Korea's world champion Park Tae-hwan a man who spruiked going into the Games that he was ready to break the 2002 world mark, qualified third in 3:43.35.

I couldn't find any articles about Park coming right out and "spruiking," but one article said his coach believed that to take the gold in 2008, one would need to approach Ian Thorpe's record time of 3:40.08. Another article said he announced before the Olympics that he would break the record, but I couldn't find a direct quotation. Likewise an August 5th article from Arirang in the Chosun Ilbo is titled "Swimmer Park Tae-hwan Aims for World Record," but doesn't get into any specifics, so if this "spruiking" turned out to be a case of an overzealous Korean media hyping its athletes to the sky, I wouldn't be surprised.

Anyway, some very nice investigative work by Mr. Bevers, who has contributed plenty of well-researched pieces over the years and who also runs a nice site devoted to observations made while studying the Korean language. Unfortunately he's probably best-known for being run out of his Korean university job for doing research on the Liancourt Rocks that went against popular opinion in South Korea.