translation into KOREAN

Korean is a beautiful and amazing language and is extremely intricate, making English to Korean translation a very intense and difficult task. Korean is a language spoken by many people worldwide, and mainly in North and South Korea. The number of people that speak Korean across the globe totals 80 million. As a language, Korean is influenced by other geographically close nations, such as China and Japan. While there are many differences between English and Korean languages and translation, some of the principal differences include alphabet, phonology, verb tense, grammar and vocabulary.

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When performing English to Korean translation, there are many things to keep in mind. The Korean alphabet is called Hangul and has been around since the 15th century as a substitute for hanja, or the Chinese script. Like other Asian languages, hangul can also be written in horizontal or vertical lines. For this reason, many Korean people can adapt more easily to the Western system of writing in horizontal lines. Hangul has 14 consonants and another additional 6 vowels. However, many of the vowels and sounds that exist in English simply do not exist in Korean. This is why Korean speakers who are  learning to speak English some times have a particularly dull or flat sound in the way they speak. Many consonant pronunciations that English speakers use simply have no substitute in Korean!

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Another marked difference between English to Korean translation is in the verb conjugation. Verbs in Korean have meanings and tenses that change and are then added on to the back end of the verb in action in a sentence. This is as opposed to English, where many auxiliary verbs are extremely frequently used for expression. As such, many Korean students who are learning English and Korean translation have great difficulty stringing English verb phrases together. Additionally, there is no subject-verb agreement in Korean, which means that in Korean, verbs stay the same regardless of who or what group of people is speaking – all verbs are pretty much conjugated the same for whoever happens to be the subject and only change with the tense. Also, other differences between English and Korean include content and structure of sentences. The order of words commonly found in Korean is the subject and then the object followed by the verb. In English, the order of words that dominates our sentences is the subject followed by the verb and then the object. Additionally, it is customary while speaking Korean and doing English to Korean translation not to make references to oneself, making it very possible to come head to head with sentences that do not have much elements in them besides verbs. For both English and Korean native speakers, the translation between the two is quite a bit of work for the head to wrap around! Also, there are no articles such as ‘the’ in Korean, while adjectives and nouns frequently are confused and swapped around. Learners of both languages struggle greatly with some basic structural and content questions surrounding English to Korean translation. In spite of this, English to Korean translation is a beautiful art that once mastered can be regarded as a greatly respected skill.

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English to Korean translation, although extremely complex, is also very worthwhile. It is very rewarding to be able to take another language as difficult as Korean and be able to master it so that one can be an effective agent in English to Korean translation. English to Korean translators are highly respected and parties on both ends, both native English and native Korean speakers must work long hard hours, years even, to achieve perfection. However like everything in life, it is worth a wait while the bilingual adoption of English to Korean translation opens the windows to entire new worlds.