In spite of the titles of this article, most Koreans are not ornery, nor do they do things backward. They just write differently than we do in English.
Here are some examples.
Fractions and page numbers
Koreans don’t say “two-thirds” or “page two of three”; they say “of three, two” and “of three pages, the second page”. Fortunately, this only applies when spoken and written out in long form. If you’re just writing numerals, then nothing changes.
This means the simplest solution when translating is to add a forward slash. In other words, translate both “Page 3 of 5” and “three-fifths” to “3/5”. Otherwise, you’ll have to write it as “5 페이지 중 3 페이지” and “5분의 3”.
Korean Translation Tip – If it’s imperative that numbers from an English source stay in the same order in Korean for fractions and pages, then convert them to numerals. This is especially relevant with codes that auto-update, such as page numbering in Word. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself making this Google-esque mistake!
Dates
Korean dates are written “year/month/day”. It’s not usually a big deal to switch things around during translation, but in some cases, this can get complicated. We recently had to translate the following:
“Dates should be entered as ddmmmyyyy (Example: 14SEP2016)”
Unfortunately, we had no choice but to translate this with a long explanation that reads in English as:
“Dates must be entered in the day/month/year format, where the date is entered with two digits, the month with the three-letter English abbreviation in capital letters and the year with four digits (14SEP2016).”
Whew… That was a mouthful!
Korean Translation Tip – It’s easy to understand and translate Korean dates if you know the sequence, but don’t take it for granted that your Korean audience will be used to the English format for filling out forms.
Addresses
Korean addresses are written in Korean starting from the largest units (country, province, city…) and moving to the smallest units (…street, building, house or office number), but the other way around in English.
Here’s how our address in Korea looks when written in English:
#2406 Chungang Heightsville, 23, Ansancheonseo-Ro
Danwon-Gu, Ansan-Si, Gyeonggi-Do 15361 Republic of Korea
This is the English rendering of it from Korean:
Republic of Korea, Gyeonggi-Do, Ansan-Si, Danweon-Gu
Ansancheonseo-Ro 23, Chungang Heightsville #2406 (15361)
Kind of weird, huh? Here’s an article on it.
Korean Translation Tip – When translating English business cards to Korean, if your client wants the address translated to Korean (and most Western clients do!), then turn the order around.
AM/PM
The Korean for “AM” is “오전” and for “PM” is “오후”, but these are added before the number, not after. So “8 o’clock AM” is written “오전 8시” and “8 o’clock PM” is “오후 8시”.
Korean Translation Tip – You can get away without translating AM and PM to Korean; they are understandable by many Koreans in English. However, if you do translate them, then you have to put the Korean equivalents IN FRONT of the numbers, not AFTER.
Sentence Structure
Considering how different the sentence structures are between Western languages and Korean, is it any wonder that Korean is written the other way around in the above examples? In fact, sometimes it seems Korean and English are polar opposites. If you need a refresher on this point, check out these two one-minute videos from past tips.
- Why You Can’t Translate Phrase-by-Phrase Between English and Korean, Part I
- Why You Can’t Translate Phrase-by-Phrase Between English and Korean, Part II [EXPIRED LINK REMOVED: /2015/10/korean-translation-tip-why-you-cant-translate-phrase-by-phrase-between-english-and-korean-part-ii]
