Hello Heejung!

Thank you very much for your questions and I am glad that you checked my feedback on your homework.

Before I go over each one of your questions, I would like to clarify one thing first: the deduction in your mark may or may not be due to the points I mentioned in the feedback. I check the overall quality of your homework and give you the mark I believe you deserve, not necessarily because of one or two translation mistakes in your translation.

——————

Q1. Proper nouns

If you read my feedback carefully, I said “it would be perfectly fine and actually preferred ‘in this class’ to leave proper nouns in English.”

The reason why I leave such feedback is mainly because I have had many students asking for corrections on this issue in the past, especially for all of the proper nouns in the first two articles in Module 2. To make it crystal clear, translating (or not translating!) proper nouns will not affect your marks on your assignment; however, what I want to emphasize more is the consistency in your translation.

I see that you translated some words into Korean, and some you just left them in English. For instance, you translated "Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta" into 앨버타주의 우드 버팔로 국립공원, but not "Black Currant Iceberg, Bakeapple Iceberg" or "Sourdough Saloon." Furthermore, what made you decide that you translate the brand names such as Old Navy into 오울드 네이비 or Canadian Tire into 캐나다 타이어 but not American Express? Because frankly speaking, if you were in North America, you would not say/write "오울드 네이비" nor "캐나다 타이어" for these words, and saying "아메리칸 익스프레스"  or "아멕스" is indeed common in Korea.

Many students struggle to have a clear guideline on their own to come up with translation for proper nouns so that is the reason why I tell students to simply leave it in English in this course. Although you mentioned that there is a “standard” way of translating in Korea, you will often have employers who provide the glossary or special instructions on such proper nouns for business translations.


——————

Q2. ”Why” and “Why not?”

Once again, what I stated in my feedback was to check what I said about these two expressions, not necessarily because you mistranslated this part. The reason I provided this feedback is because many students do not necessarily differentiate the two expressions. Simply, I think it is sufficient if you believe you completely understand the reason why I say how these two expressions were translated with caution.

——————

Q3. “Bandwagon”

What I was referring to in my feedback as “how I explained the word bandwagon” was not my translation, but the whole explanation of the word “bandwagon” and how its connotation or nuances are like when it is used in a conversation. I am talking about the one with the picture of the horses. I believe it is hard to miss this explanation if you watched the lecture video.

——————

One thing I would like to also add is, unless it is that you want to practice writing in Korean, I encourage all students to write questions in English (of course unless you need to mention words/sentences in Korean specifically.) This is to improve students’ ability to communicate in their second language more proficiently. So if you could try writing questions in English next time, that would be greatly appreciated Heejung!

I am definitely going to make a correction to your mark as I believe it was partially my fault that I did not make it clear how you should interpret my feedback in the beginning of this course. I sincerely hope this helps!

Best regards,

Mason U, CMI-Korean
Business Interpretation and Translation in Korean (BIT-K) Instructor

댓글내용 확인