Lee Jang-jik, Seoul Selection’s favorite JoongAng Ilbo music critic, has penned a reply to an earlier critique of his work by Seoul Selection president Hank Kim in Media Today.
Interestingly enough, Lee cited a comment from my blog. I post the section below along with the original comment. This is either extremely funny or extremely sad. Or a warning about the use of sarcasm in cyberspace, especially in a multilingual environment. Or maybe all three:
서울셀렉션에서 발행하는 영문잡지 ‘SEOUL’ 편집장 Robert Koehler가 자신의 블로그에 제 기사에 대한 반론을 올려 놓았더군요. 그 댓글 가운데 ‘jd’라는 아이디로 올린 글(9월11일 오후 9시6분)을 보면 당시의 급박했던 상황을 잘 알 수 있습니다.
“‘It Was A Pity!’ the woman screamed for three hours straight as the bus fought its way through the heavey traffic Hank Kim[김형근 대표의 영문 이름]’s family had set up along the chosen route. All of the other foreign guests wanted to scream as well…No one had a bright face” (말도 안돼! 꽉 막힌 도로에서 쉬지 않고 달리는 버스 안에서 그 여자는 3시간 내내 비명을 질렀다. 다른 외국인 손님들도 모두 비명을 지르고 싶었다… 밝은 표정을 짓는 사람은 한 명도 없었다)
Now, here’s the translation of that section:
Robert Koehler, the chief editor of SEOUL, the English-language magazine published by Seoul Selection, posted a refutation of my article on his blog. If we read one the comments posted on it by “jd” (Sep. 11 at 9:06 p.m.), we can see how urgent the situation was at the time:
[In English] “‘It Was A Pity!’ the woman screamed for three hours straight as the bus fought its way through the heavey traffic Hank Kim[Seoul Selection President Kim Hyeon-geun's English name]’s family had set up along the chosen route. All of the other foreign guests wanted to scream as well…No one had a bright face” [Lee's Translation into Korean] “What nonsense. The woman screamed for three hours inside the bus that ran without break along the congested road. All the other foreign guests wanted to scream, too. Not one person’s face was bright.”
The horror. The horror. Now compare this with jd’s actual comment:
Strong words from an unhappy person: “it was a pity.”
I can see that woman’s face in my head. She’s all pulling her hair out and smoke and fire are shooting from her mouth and nose!
“‘It Was A Pity!’ the women screamed for three hours straight as the bus fought its way through the heavy traffic Hank Kim’s family had set up along the chosen route. All of the other foreign guests wanted to scream as well, but they were too upset at the national shame they were forced to witness — for three hours in heavy traffic that Hank Kim’s family had arranged — to even speak one word. but, the mood on the bus could not be mistaken: no one had a bright face.”
Robert,
I am sure that the event was as good as it could have been considering all the different problems you guys ran into. Also, all the future trips will be better.
(But everyone will still talk about the first one and all the problems and laugh about them. Actually, the first group will reach urban legend status and everyone on the later trips will be asking you to tell them about the funny mishaps and goofs on that legendary first trip. Within three years it will become common knowledge that the boat on the first trip actually sank. Oddly, this will help fill seats.)
I mean, given how Lee quoted foreign opinion in his initial piece, I can’t say this surprises me. I’ll be generous and chalk it up to linguistic and cultural differences.
18 Comments
What a chump.
robert,
wow. now i’m famous. i will, of course, provide autographs to other posters at the marmot’s hole at a discounted price. i don’t want people to think i’ve gone and forgotten where i came from.
i imagine that because “jd” is not my real name and it’s also not something that could be considered linked to me, i’d have a hard time claiming any type of damages in court.
for the record, i think that anyone who writes korean well should post something under the reporter’s “reply” and make it clear that he has totally misused what i wrote.
i will be writing a sarcasm-free letter to the editors of the reporter’s paper.
mr. lee jang-jik is a genius!!! ok, i’m being sarcastic, but who knows, i might be quoted in his article next time!
this guy is anal. he is poop. he is 똥!!! i’ve met people like him, and they are the worst kinds of people in the world. they think they know everything, and cannot take any criticism.
It’s possible Mr. Lee Jang-Jik is a “foreigner expert” in the vein of so many foreign “Korea experts”: He might not speak or understand English.
brendon, you mean kinda like you?
Umm, no, wiseguy. I might not be confident enough to go on TV, but among the foreign lawyers in Seoul I know my Korean-language proficiency is near the top (80th-85th percentile?). With legal documents and business meetings I’m fully competent — while “You make me so mad I could kill you” and “Why does it hurt when I pee?” remain beyond my comfort zone. I read vernacular newspapers, primary-source statutes and court precedents, and help my children correct their hanja. I can’t read Japanese, and my Chinese has withered away and been replaced by Korean. My guess is that puts me way ahead of Aidan Foster-Carter, but a bit behind Clark Sorenson, and well behind the late James Palais.
Heck, folks should really learn both of those:
‘너가 나를 화나게하면 너를 죽일 수가 있어’ could prove very helpful at the right time, and ‘오줌 눌때 왜 아픈거죠?’ really ought to be provided upon disembarkation at Incheon Airport.
mr. carr, esquire…
did you attend uw? i had prof. sorenson for a class or two. i took one of prof. palais’ class but dropped it after the first week. now i regret it.
gbnhj is a literalist. Surely I have constructed one of those two phrases myself in the past — just not with the same comfort I now can discuss useful things like resolution-approval thresholds at the meetings of the Shareholders or the Board of Directors. I’ll leave it to the reader’s imagination to figure out which phrase of gbhnj’s has been more useful to me.
Yes, I took a couple of classes and seminars with Prof. Palais when I was at UW. He was a real treat, and you definitely missed out. His method was more aggressively Socratic than anything over at the law school. Now whenever I read anything he wrote, I “hear” that Boston cabdriver voice and it makes me smile. John Haley is the same way — his unmistakable voice definitely comes out in his writings. And I like to think, so does mine. That’s the way it should be, and it’s one of the things those men taught me.
Lee Jang-jik is either incompetent or dishonest — either way he needs to find other work, maybe delivering newspapers at dawn. Is the JoongAng Ilbo that far off-base in covering politics and North Korea? That could breed real trouble.
Sorry if I sound a bit paternalizing, but…come on! Hasn’t this ‘feud’ gone far enough already? He’s a music critic. Music critics criticize. It’s what they do. So, you got him on one of his bad days. Pull up your bootstraps and learn from the experience.
Oups, I meant patronizing.
It’s true - I am a bit of a literalist at times. Just having some fun with the translations, folks (although, ironically, that’s also a literal truth).
“Oups, I meant patronizing.”
No, I think paternalizing, fits the bill perfectly. A father berating the kids to stop bitching and fighting.
Nonethless, while he may have started off as just a music critic on a bad mood day, he’s clearly gone well over the line since…., and if we can’t bitch on a blog, where can we…
Brendon, for the uninitiated what/where is UW, I’m guessing it’s not the University of Warsaw.
university of washington
I’ll leave it to the reader’s imagination to figure out which phrase of gbhnj’s has been more useful to me.
Yeah, many times has Brendon stood in line for a morning “Ream n Scream” after uttering the more useful phrase!
This guy needs a hard slap across the puss.
–Remort