A while ago a reader passed along some pictures of a display in Geoje, in South Gyeongsang province. He writes the flags and the placards are put up to reflect the international influence the shipyards have on the island. A nice thought, but as with a lot of the bad English and the cultural mistranslations in Korea, you really have to wonder how they got it so wrong.
You'll find the flags near the ferry terminal in Gohyeon-dong. He notes that someone noticed the error on "language" and fixed it with a sticker, but didn't think the other information needed any more work.
Anticipating the response from some that I'm not being constructive, I'll share with you the numbers and locations for the tourist information centers, if you're in the area and would like to provide some pointers for the next draft of the placards. Of course, they really should have checked with native English speakers before doing it in the first place, but some people get upset when I point that out.
20 comments:
Oh my dear god. Someone flunked out of elementary school and then lied on their resume perhaps.
I wonder how Korea would feel if we put up a sign in our countries saying their language was Japanese and they are a part of China?
have you seen some of the country squares on the sidewalk in itaewon? you know with the words "hello" in the country's language the capital etc its a mishmash of what its in its native language and english. example "italy" has "roma" as its capital. come on be consistent. I want to see "krung thep" for bangkok
No, I've only been to Itaewon a couple times and never really noticed.
The "Lost in Translation" category here has a lot of weird interpretations of foreign cultures, mostly in Korea. Here's my "favorite":
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/2008/06/vank-distorts-american-culture-rabble.html
VANK's always on everyone else for distorting Korean culture, then they go and put out something like that.
I love how like, 3 countries have "Taipei" as their capital... and someone scratched out a couple of the wrong ones... but not all of them.
I mean, screw consulting a native English speaker, Bri, how about consulting a Korean-language atlas... it may help them correctly place Canada in Northern North America instead of Northern South America. I don't think English speakers have a monopoly on 3rd grade geography.
Yeah, that's true, but there's a lot of potential for error when typing things out with English letters.
That's one explanation for the complete inability for Koreans to spell my name "Brian" and not "Brain" or "Brain Doetsch" or "Brain Deotch," or whatever. My name was misspelled nearly every time my school typed something up and printed it out, when really all they had to do was (1) ask me how to spell it, or (2) look at the records on file where it actually IS spelled right. It doesn't take much to look at a piece of paper and type it into a computer, especially when you've been looking at English letters on the keyboard your whole life, but there's still that high potential for transfer error.
Priceless
Mike's right. There's not much excuse for putting countries on the wrong continent. This is either pure laziness or gross stupidity. Either is unacceptable when you are attempting to show the economic importance of your town in the world economy. Amateur hour strikes again.
Remind me to bring a marker next time I go to Geoje
I'm going to make a guess that it was a mix of computer error and proofreading fail. It looks like the primary error are the locations of the countries. I'm going to guess that the field they printed out from a database was 1 off. Makes sense confusing Canada with Columbia in that case.
About 4 years ago I worked at a Korean middle school. the school was very low scoring and had many, many problems.
I had no textbook so I decided to use a geography text a friend and I had come up with on our own.
I managed to force the VP into authorizing the school printer to make copies for every student I taught (1300+ copies of the 35 page book).
As I taught it I discovered that the students in the low level classes knew nothing. And even the students who were in the high level classes had issues. Many at both levels pointed to Australia when asked to point to America. One girl pointed to Madagascar when she was supposed to point to..... Korea.
Nationalism was a huge problem, with many students refusing to put countries in order by size, since it meant Korea would be last/smallest on the list; lesson, never let reality get in the way of national pride.
But the kicker came at final exam time. I was told I had to stop teaching that Cuba was considered part of North America since the Korean textbook for Gyeonggi taught that is was part of South America.
After a few years of teaching and after leaving Korea I have toned down my criticisms of the country. But the blind nationalism that plagues the nation does have a real and tangible impact on the country and its people.
My guess is that they consulted Miss South Carolina for these placards.
I love how even the 한글 is wrong on some of them.
All the info that's written in Hangeul is correct.
not all the info in Hangeul is correct. Unless Brunei as moved to Europe recently.
Australia isn't in Europe either.
And they want google to get what right on their maps of Korea exactly?
I can see if there's a translation error but even the Korean is wrong. Like Brunei is in Europe?
Um, V0LLR4TH.... the capital of Romania is not 타이페이...
My favorite: one of the placards not shown is, "Maxico." It makes Mexico sound like a gas station, or a really bad movie. There are interesting places on the island, most especially the Cultural Museum, which features unicorns, Spider-Man, a pirate ship, and life-size robotic figurines. And that's just on the outside.
Not sure what the capital is? Just put Taipei!
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