Anyway, the Korea Times has a shot of the city of Obama, Japan, celebrating Barack Obama's victory.
Plenty more information and video on Japan Probe.
The election provided me a topic for my teachers' workshop and my afterschool class. In the former I reminded the other teachers about the ways they should and shouldn't translate 흑인, especially since the textbook brings up "colored" in the current chapter about Marian Anderson. In the afterschool class of seven students I went over some vocabulary and explained what the stuff of election map means. I went a little into "흑인," too, and went over some terminology. I also posed a question I first saw on Dave's, and asked students what percentage of the US population they thought was black. The answers ranged from 45% to 75%, and they were surprised to learn that plenty of other ethnicities voted for Obama, as the real figure is closer to 13%. I also learned that the students were taught in ethics class that the US has 52 states, so there you go.
For the record, I heard "nigger" and "colored" far more frequently in rural Pennsylvania than I ever did in South Korea. And you can bet there are plenty of people back home right pissed that . . . "that" was elected to the highest office in the land. But I bring up "흑인" from time to time because of what the dictionaries say about it, and because four of the five terms that turn up range from inappropriate to shockingly offensive. Always troubling to get essays from students about how Abraham Lincoln helped the niggers, regardless of how fashionable that term was in the 1860s or how prevalant that opinion was.
The victory speech is here from BBC, and the concession speech is here on Youtube.
4 comments:
Wow, that's the first time I ever looked up the translation for 흑인 in my dictionary. Shocking!!!! Thanks for pointing that out, it explains some assignments I've had from my students. ^^
Yeah, it's pretty nasty what results when you type 흑인 into Naver, it's like a time-warp to the 50s. Hopefully Naver will look into that and use more appropriate terms and translations in the future.
Maybe the "52 states" thing comes from confusion regarding the Territories. There are 50 states AND a handful of other places that don't neatly fit into any administrative category.
I've seen Seoul and Busan counted among the "provinces" although they are special administrative regions, so the writers might feel justified.
It might also stem from confusion of what the states really are and how they are different from provinces.
Yeah, John, probably. But still, that's a pretty big "wtf?" error. I don't think there's anybody in the States who counts Puerto Rico and D.C.---I'm not sure if those are the extra two or what---as states, and I thought most people knew "50."
The thing about "nigger" and "darky" isn't that they shouldn't be in dictionaries. They're real words after all, used with more or less frequency throughout the States over the years. The problem is they're written side-by-side "black," and are hardly given any warning label at all. People looking through a bilingual dictionary won't know which of the many translations to use, so they'll just pick whichever one they like and won't bother to check up on it. That type of cultural knowledge is important for people studying English or who hope to travel abroad.
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