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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”...
With the robust multilingual support in Adobe Indesign and recent versions of other design packages, many clients are opting to handle Korean layout in-house. Unfortunately, people with absolutely no knowledge of Korean can really butcher a layout job. My Korean Translation Tips have addressed some of the most egregious mistakes and...
Several years ago I posted an article about why I don't generally offer per-word rates for Korean>English translation. The following is from a recent email to a client, explaining things in a bit more detail. ====== Dear <Client>, Here are the issues I can think of now which make...
We frequently get translation requests for content where the source text has been chopped up into sentence fragments. This is especially common with captions for video, since the content needs to show up on-screen in bite-sized pieces. But sometime clients even send such requests because they want to be able...
This tip is based on a reader question about the following graphic in last month's message. The reader asked why there isn't a space before or after the parentheses… Good question! The answer may surprise you, but no, there should not be spaces there. The reason is hard to explain...
I have been using the Korean version of Office 365 Small Business Premium for a year and it's time to renew. A couple days ago, Microsoft sent me an email thanking me for renewing. Only problem…. They used the word for "subscribe" that is only used when subscribing to things...
I recently asked my agency clients for their feedback on offering a rate discount in exchange for the right to use machine translation and termbase leveraging on certain projects. Machine translation brings up ideas of low-quality output, and cross-client TM sharing is generally off-limits due to confidentiality issues and rights...
I've posted several short articles on Korean layout in this set of tips, including Cardinal Rules of Korean-Language Layout, Korean Layout Rules for MS PowerPoint and Spacing Issues in MS Word. In this post, I introduce some font handling advice to improve the way Korean-language layout looks to Korean readers. Of course,...
I've previously written about the Cardinal Rules of Korean-Language Layout. When clients handle layout on their end, I frequently send them the link to this article so that they or their layout expert can brush up quickly on the rules. Of course, to implement those correctly, you've got to know how...
In previous posts, I've shared about number units unique to Korean and how Korean prose doesn't include a lot of spelled-out numbers. Here are three more tips… ———- Many Koreans handwrite their numbers differently than we do in English. I used to think this was a generational thing, but I occasionally...
