Chapter 37: The Web of Relationships

37
The Web of Relationships

The one word relationships was what struck me Dano on a morning stroll of an autumn month in the first year or so in the 1990s. It was really an epiphany seen through the clouds of suspicion, doubt, and disbelief that hit like lightning. As a key word which refers to a clue to the interpretation of the English prose, the word relationship or relationships was not originally worked out by Dano himself, though.

The vocabulary tests of the SAT in the United States have for long been based on a linguistic inquiry to know about the applicants' versatility on the matter of relationships between words. The writing books or something, or the guide books for writers, give tips to the would-be writers on how to organize what he or she has in mind on the mechanism of "relationships."

To elaborate, it can be said that everything in itself is relationships. Everyone is relationships also. In other words, something is a terminal result of the relationships between some things. Somebody is an end result of the relationships between some bodies. Nothing and none can be identified unless in terms of relationships. The planet earth can be explained in terms of the relationships between the other planets. So the language, or a creation of the human beings on the planet earth, can be explained and interpreted in terms of the relationships between the members of the communication subjects and channels.

I Dano asserted that behavior determination or modification can be made by the agent's relationships between the other. If the behavior determination or modification was made in a right orientation in terms of relationships, his or her behaviors would be judged desirable and accepted by the members of society. If not, the agent would be repelled, alienated, criticized, or punished.

Let's take one. Quon attacked the Morning Calm Daily and its owner family members, branding them as "the pro-Japanese traitors", while he himself living with a Japanese woman. He made rambling excuses for the cohabitation with a Japanese woman, saying that living with a Japanese woman had nothing to do with the national perfidies before the Liberation.

He was so loose with himself, while tightening the other citizens. He was loose enough to make electronic distortions, say, the magnification of post viewerships by mobilizing his students. He should not have attacked the specific media with the charges of the media's pro-Japanese practices in the specific past.

Take one more. Mr. Acid, the then chairman of the Open Pen Party, who had had his dead father with the career of an army police officer of the Imperial Japan, should not have attacked the then opposition members with their fathers' pro-Japanese perfidious activities. In the end, Mr. Acid had had to be defaced and dethroned as chairman when the evil deeds of his torturer father had been disclosed.

Dano rehashed the point wherever he went, and whoever he met. Mankind was a relational existence, so all the linguistic efforts were organized and interpreted in terms of relationships between words, sentences, and paragraphs. Though South Korea had been "notorious" for having published "excellent" translations which had been "famous" for "near perfect translation," a minimal portion of translation writers used to tarnish the reputation of the Korean versions of the English language publications.

Dano gave a demonstration of a lecture sheet by using an English-written source text.

Text:

Brig interjected that the pair's overseas travels included not only Israel but
also several European countries. They were on the prowl for talent, and
they were considering opening new offices. For Sergey, who has a sharp
sense of humor, the search was ongoing. (The Google Story, David A. Vise
and Mark Malseed, p.13: The Korean version, p.32)

Dano's comment:

The Korean version has been an utter mistranslation. Above all things, the translator had had no idea of relationships. He had failed to see the paragraph's temporal and spatial relationships. From which all the farcical consequences have originated.

Point One which the translator had to take into consideration as regards the interpretation of the paragraph was spatial relationships, that is, the two characters, Brig and Sergey, were on the stage and giving a speech to the Israeli student audience down below.

Point Two was that the paragraph in question is not the paragraph of common exposition but that of a speech, the so-called Free Speech, so if the translator gave the Korean interpretation of the paragraph in the past tense statement, it would be a misstatement.

Dano showed how the paragraph could be paraphrased:
Brig interrupted to say in a loud voice, "The two of us are travelling not only Israel but also several European countries." He went on to say, "We are looking for talent and considering opening new offices there." Then Sergey said jokingly, "We are still searching."


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Dano demonstrated another exemplary lecture of intra-sentence relationship:

Text:
They are beautiful, of course. That is plain to see. (TIME)

Dano's comment:
These two sentences above were those of the essay of the TIME Magazine entitled [the Super Models] and the Korean version stated to the effect that: They are beautiful, of course. They seem plain at initial sight.

Sentence One and Sentence Two in the Korean version are a nonsense, and contradictory because Sentence Two should be equal in assessment or strengthen the meaning of the preceding sentence. The proposition that someone is beautiful is an expression of an excessively aesthetic sentiment, so the subsequent statement should not demean it but amplify or repeat the previous statement. So the translator is greatly mistaken.

How did the unfavorable consequences ensue? Dano found the translator lacking in the knowledge of the English syntax. The translator did not know that the pronoun that in Sentence Two represents Sentence One (They are beautiful, of course.) So Sentence Two can be rewritten as: That (=They are beautiful, of course.) is plain to see. And Sentence Two can be transformed into: It is plain to see that.(that=They are beautiful, of course.) The Korean version should have been in effect as: They are beautiful, of course. People can easily see that they are beautiful.

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Granted that the English prose is the system of relationships, it has to be made clear what type of relationships will make for a specific language situation. Therefore, if the teachers and students at large do not pay special heed, they'll be liable to be trapped in the misinterpretation of the communication at hand, Dano says.

Dano's lecture:

In the cinema [The American President], Actor Michael Douglas says to Actress Anette Bening, who bashes into the presidential room of the White House and assures to herself that she will leave him once and for all. He is confident about her. He says to her that "You're attracted to me." And he tells her that her problem is sex and nervousness. She asks him challengingly and unbelievably, saying, "My problem is sex and nervousness?" He answers yes, and she, as if to make a great decision, asks about the whereabouts of the rest room and after a while she appears with a sleeping gown. A little perplexed at her unexpected appearance, he stammers and she approaches him and hugs him, calling him in heated whispers, "Andy!"

Dano said that the noun phrase sex and nervousness is a mode of discourse. In other words, the native speakers speak like that. But such mode of speaking needs some heed. So the Korean translator, as a speaker of English as a second language must prepare himself or herself for a sophisticated transformation. In brief, sex and nervousness doesn't have a separate entity, that is, not two independent nouns. The two words are an inseparable concept. Figuratively speaking, the two words are like a married couple, not a single man and a woman standing at the same place. So the [섹스와 두려움] on the translated transcript was wrong.

The Korean version cannot explain the protagonist on the movie Anette Bening's question. The verb of the question should have been [are], but not [is]. (Sex and nervousness are my problem?) Then what's the relationship between sex and nervousness? It is the cause and effect relationship. In other words, in this case the noun sex is a cause and the abstract noun nervousness is the effect. Protagonist Michael Douglas thinks that she is nervous about sex because she might have had sex few and far between. He said "Your problem is nervousness about sex." As if thunderstruck, and as if to prove that she is not suffering from that kind of symptom, she goes toward the bathroom and comes before him naked. (cf bread and butter=>bread with butter; negotiation and compromise=>compromise through negotiations)

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Dano declared that Webster's Unabridged English Dictionary and all the assortments of English dictionaries are not "companionable" but "referential." The owners of the dictionaries should refer to them with care, doubt, and disbelief, Dano stressed. The Korean teachers and students have tended to depend on the dictionaries too much.

Text:

They would not be watching his bedroom, and Luigi said he was relieved by that. If Marco managed to find a woman willing to visit him, they could catch her coming and going with the camera in the den, and that was certainly enough for Luigi. If he got really bored, he could hit a switch and listen for fun. (The Broker, John Grisham, p.152)

Dano's comment:

The huge number of English words are not fixed in their meanings. In other words, many English words do not have fixed meanings. "They are only listed there in the dictionaries for a frame of reference. That's been hard of the Korean speakers of English to realize. Really hard. why? Because their eyes have been glued to the dictionary pages. In short, the words in dictionaries have been used as the absolute guides for them."

It's been so disappointing to see that most of the Korean translators or something to convey the meaning of the bold typed noun the den as a private study or library or something. I wish I could show the Korean versions which have been appearing in the translated novels. The noun the den does not have its own independent meaning. It only represents his bedroom, that is, it is a substitution for “his room.” *Note that the substitution should have the definite article the as a modifying determiner.

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"Relationships in the English prose are actually cross-sectional," Dano said. "They define each other, determine each other, and affect each other."

Text:
"Did you use Alta Vista?" he asked, raising his right hand to signal students what to do if they had used the first major search engine that Google had left in the dust.
"Excite?" he asked, listing another erstwhile search engine.
"Just curious," Brin went on, without breaking cadence, "what search engine used here." (The Google Story, p.15) (The Korean version, p.34)

Dano's comments:
I wish I showed the Korean version. The relationships of the bold-typed word Excite are cross-sectional and multi-directional. The word Excite is related to the previously stated word Alta vista and the subsequent phrase "another erstwhile search engine." It's been so regrettable for the Korean translator to see the relationships surrounding the word at issue. It's been a new awakening to me that what is taken for granted to the native speaker can cause such a linguistic disaster. The character Brin in the paragraph just said, "(Did you also use) Excite?" He is not asking, "Are you excited?" Don't you Korean translator of the Google Story see that the noun Excite is defined by "another erstwhile search engine"?

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Dano said from time to time that buck stops where money is. In other words, the translators and their publishers should take responsibility for their publications, especially when they had sold huge number of copies. Dano thought aloud it's deplorable that the Korean version of Doctors had committed so many translational errors and that even after having been pointed to the errors they hadn't corrected them.

Text:
Indeed a frivolous legend has it that Hippocrates, having grown restless after spending two millennia in the Elysian Fields with the hale and hearty, came back to earth and applied to Harvard Med to observe what progress had been made in (1)the profession since his heyday.

Posing as a straight-A Harvard senior who had scored a perfect eight hundred on the Med Aps and had also run (2)four minutes for the mile, (3)he went serenely confident to his interview. When asked by his interrogator, respected orthopedic surgeon Christopher Dowling, what he considered to be the essential principle of Medicine, Hippocrates confidently quoted himself, "First, do no harm."

He was rejected as unsuitable. (Doctors, Erich Segal, p.85) (the Korean version, p.113)

Dano's comments:
The English prose is the system of relationships. In other words, the English exposition consists of relationships which function as cross-sectional and multi-directional. The translator of the English language publications who belongs to the category of the second language speaker of English should explicate the relationships they are to encounter in the expositions. Still, a considerable portion of so-called Korean translators themselves do not elucidate the relationships in the English writings they are handling. I wish I could show the Korean version.

Of all the relationships of the prose, the substitution arising in the relationships is very important. The pronoun he in the above paragraph of course represents Hippocrates. However, very regrettably, the Korean translator discloses his or her ignorance by grasping the pronoun he as a medical student of Harvard University. The bold-typed the profession of course means the medical job at large. And four minutes for the mile means that the Harvard Med students who have passed the Med Aps should undergo another physical test of the "running of a mile in less than four minutes." (www.google.com)

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The arrangement of words in the English prose is made in an orderly fashion. In other words, the native- speaking English writers compose expositions according to the principles of paragraph writing, to be exact. So the teachers and students of the English prose as a second language should teach and learn on the structural basis of the prose composition.

Text:
Langdon nodded absently. Symbologists often remarked that France--a country renowned for machismo, womanizing, and diminutive insecure leaders like Napoleon and Pepin the Short--could not have chosen a more apt national emblem than a thousand-foot phallus. (The Davinci Code, Dan Brown, p.17) (The Korean version1, p.31)

Dano's comments:
I wish you could see into the Korean version, and I wish I could show how incommunicably awkward the arrangements were made. The bold-typed and underlined words on the previously stated paragraph enumerate the elements which are considered derisive and ridiculous the writer of The Davinci Code wants to convey to his readers. Therefore, the enumeration of facts should satisfy these conditions. The writer of this novel The Davinci Code wants to say through his protagonist that the French male population tends to domineer, philander, and to be physically short and psychologically unstable.

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Jesus had deplored, "Having eyes, see ye not?" I thought aloud and had a mind to whisper to the ears of many and many Korean translators and teachers of English, "Why can't you see, having two good eyes?" I was wondering oftentimes when there would come a time they would be able to see the true picture of the English language. I was also wondering what on earth they were teaching anyway at so many departments of English literature of the Korean universities.

Text:

"Sorry, don't know what came over me," he said. "Thought I was Jung for a moment," Brill's rendition of Jung--which had been remarkable--put Ferenczi in stitches but had left Freud unmoved. Clearing his throat, Brill directed our attention to the name of his publisher, Smith Ely Jelliffe, on the manuscript's title page. "Jelliffe runs the Journal of Nervous Disease," said Brill. "He's a doctor, rich as Croesus, very well connected, and another convert to the cause, thanks to me." (The Interpretation of Murder, Jed Rubenfeld, p.70) (The Korean version, p.104)

Dano's comments:
The exact meanings of the English words do not lie in the dictionary. In other words, the English words don't have fixed meanings anywhere in any form or in any dictionary. Rather, the meaning of a word is defined, regulated, extended, limited, and determined in the mutual and interactive relationships of the prose reality. A century-long time span, for which the English language has been introduced through the efforts of the Western Christian missionaries, hasn't taught that principle to the Korean population, which is really deplorable.

The bold-typed and underlined phrase another convert is not one who has changed religious beliefs for himself but another Freudian like Brill. To elaborate, another convert has something to do with Brill, Freud, and psychoanalysis. Brill was able to convince Jelliffe to become a Freudian. Brill says that he is credited with Jelliffe's conversion to psychoanalyst.

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Dano emphasized the necessity of the knowledge about the relationships between English derivatives. "Some derivatives need attention," he said. Especially when the derivatives belong to different categories of grammatical function.

Text:
When Steve was later asked about the effect of so much wealth, he named "visibility" as the principal factor. "There are tens of thousands of people who have a net worth of more than $1 million," he said. "There are thousands of people who are worth more than $10 million. But the number who have more than $100 million gets down to 100." (iCon Steve Jobs, Jeffrey S. Young William L. Simon, p.65) (The Korean version, p.92)

Dano's comments:
The abstract noun "visibility" is related to the cited reference stated below. It was so regrettable that the Korean translator had fumbled about the meaning of the "visibility." It was the case of "Having eyes, see ye not?" Let me show how the abstract noun "visibility" is created :[see=>visible=>visibility]

I can see the star.
=>The star is visible.
=>the visibility of the star

By applying the above mode, we can get the similar manipulation.

I can see the rich people.
=>The rich people are visible.
=>my visibility of the rich people

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I Dano found that the relationships in the English paragraphs were sometimes progressively developing. I wanted that the Korean teachers and students, and the students of English as a second language around the world at large would see to it that their teachings would be more highly effective.

Text:
Most of my professors are stuffy academics who wear ties to class and lecture with their coats buttoned. Max hasn't worn a tie in decades. And he doesn't lecture. He performs. I hate to see him leave this place. (The Rainmaker, John Grisham, p.37) (The Korean version, p.56)

Dano's comments:
Teachers and students of English as a second language should know that the English language is the language of relationships, so the words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs should not be grasped in their own separate meanings but explicated in the context of mutual relationships. What a ludicrous crap the Korean translator had blurted! I wish I could show the Korean version. He said in his fumbling version to the effect that his lecture was near perfection. Nope.

The bold-typed and underlined sentence has nothing to do with the perfection of a lecture or something. It has something to do with a teaching behavior, which is developmental as regards a mere stationary lecture. The writer says that the protagonist of the novel Max doesn't lecture but performs. A smart reader can notice that he is less stuffy and less boring, of course. His lecture is more dynamic, impressive, and more enthusiastic. His lecture necessitates a strong gesticulation, a voluminous voice, and diagrams, etc, like an actor acts out on the stage.

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The relationships in the English prose are stated with mathematical exactness. So the leaders in the English-teaching institutions should pay particular heed lest they misconstrue the communication transmitted through English.

Text:
Laura spied a familiar group of Harvard refugees from across the river and hurried to join them, Palmer in pursuit.

Barney took his place in line, feeling lost. He was only mildly relieved to discover that they were indeed expecting him--and had even assigned him lodgings. (Doctors, Erich Segal, p.86) (The Korean version1, p.115)

Dano's comments:
In the paragraph at issue, the movement of the characters is stated in temporal sequence. It's been so regrettable that the Korean translator of the novel had bungled the interpretation. In the paragraph the noun phrase the Harvard refugees refers to the Harvard Medical School students accommodated in the boarding facilities of the school. Laura leaves to greet her colleague students from across the river, and her boyfriend Palmer follows her, and Barney takes the place which has been vacated by Palmer.

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I hated to see the moments in which the Korean translators' imagination leapt. I wondered why they so brazenly created scenes and made up stories which of course did not exist. I always said translations "are" not and "do not have to" be "creations," just like the incompetent Korean translators so often excused themselves for their blunders, giggling.

Text:
Bruiser takes an urgent phone call, probably a topless dancer in jail for solicitation, and we ease from our seats. He whispers over the phone that he wants me to return this afternoon. (The Rainmaker, John Grisham, p.165) (The Korean version, p.228)

Dano's comments:
It's insulting to see the translators telling lies. It's been a confession of laziness and the lack of fundamentals, that is, the lack of the syntactic training. That's because most of the mistakes have been related to the syntactical problems. The Korean translator got the bold-typed and underlined message wrong. He misconstrued the meaning to the effect that the topless dancer was calling from the prison, begging Bruiser to bail her out of it.


It was a sheer creation because the statement was not in the script. The bold-typed and underlined phrase 'for solicitation' does not have relationship with the action of a phone call." The two elements are a mile far apart. The bold-typed part is an adverbial phrase which modifies in jail. To elaborate:

A topless girl is in jail for solicitation.
=>A topless girl is put in jail for acts of solicitation.
=>A topless girl is put in jail on account of having committed solicitation.
=>A topless girl is put in jail because she has solicited her customers. (solicitation means acts of attempting to draw customers to offer one's sex for money)

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Some vernacular language copies, not all, of course, used to be deceptive. In other words, the readers of some Korean version copies used to be taken advantage of their innocence by some manipulative publishers and "over-creative translators." In sum, some copies of the local language version carried the lukewarm taste of the original at best, the insipid taste at worst. And whenever there arose the matter of misinterpretations in the local language translations, they used to make prevarications of some sort, excusing themselves by saying, "Translation is a second creation," giggling away.

Text:
"About ninety degrees?" I would ask. "Sure, Mr. Thomas, whatever you say," the answer would come back. "Something like that." So I would write, "High 90 degrees." Then I would ask later, "Kinda cool out there now?" "Sure, Mr. Thomas," the answer would come back. "About seventy-two degrees, would you say?" "Sure, Mr. Thomas, whatever you say," the answer would come back. And so I would write, "Low seventy-two degrees." And thus was the weather report filed from Beirut. (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman, p.18) (The Korean version, p.59)

Dano's comments:
The Korean translator's rendition of the original script is really hilarious, because he hollers Kinda. He mistakes the bold-typed and underlined word Kinda for the name of a person. So he calls him Kin-da. In other words, he pronounces the word as Kin-der but not as Kine-der. That is a modest revelation of the lack of syntactic training. If Kinda had been a proper noun denoting a man's name used as a callee, you should have put a comma after Kinda. (cf Kinda,)

The bold-typed sentence is about ellipsis. The non-elliptical version should have been: Is it kind of cool out there now?

(Is it) kind of cool out there now?
=>Kind of cool out there now?
=>Kinda cool out there now?

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If and when relationships are measured by size, quantity, and attribute and so described, I say "then the translators of the English documents should make their best efforts possible" to convey the exact relationships. But more often than not the writers of the Korean version fail to do that by equivocating or prevaricating, taking advantage of the linguistic leeway and generous readers.

Text:
For some reason, said Brin, "people underestimated the importance of finding information, as opposed to other things you would do online. If you are searching for something like a health issue, you really want to know, in some cases it is a life-and-death matter. We have people who search Google for heart-attack symptoms and then call nine-one-one." But sometimes you really want to in-form yourself about something much simpler.

When I was in Beijing in June 2004, I was riding the elevator down one morning with my wife, Ann, and sixteen-year-old daughter, Natalie, who was carrying a fistful of postcards written to her friends. Ann said to her, "Did you bring their addresses along?" Natalie looked at her as if she were positively nineteenth-century. "No," she said, with that you-are-so-out-of-it-Mom tone of voice. "I just Googled their phone numbers, and their home addresses came up." (The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman, p.155) (The Korean version, p.205)

Dano's comments:
It often occurs that people get lost and lose their cherished families. But the writer mustn't get lost and lose track of his or her characters. It's a disgrace that the Korean translator was missing in the evident typographical trails and because of the trauma he couldn't recognize who was who.

As a result, the innocent readers of the Korean version were forced to meet Brin, who had been Google's founding CEO, with wife and his sixteen-year-old daughter. It's because the writer of the Korean version of The World Is Flat "fell suddenly ill" and mistook Thomas L. Friedman and his family for Brin's. Thus, the translator ended up mistaking the first-person pronoun "I" in the second paragraph as the founder of Google instead of Mr. Friedman, with Friedman's daughter turning into Brin's. I wish you could read the Korean version.

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Relationships cited in the original prose should all be conveyed as they were to the readers of the vernacular version, I say, "but some of them mustn't be arbitrarily omitted" just like in so many cases seen in South Korea.

Text:
As to the question of why we search, aside from securing our immortality, the answer is more complicated than it might seem. Sure, we search to find information on all manner of things, or locate something to buy, or to simply find the shortest route to a site we already know exists (the practice of typing in a word you know so as to yield a site you wish to visit, also called a navigational query). In short, we search to find. (The Search, John Battelle, p.31) (The Korean version, p.70)

Dano's comments:
What is translation about? It is the matter of trust, I said whenever the ludicrous instances of the translators' betrayals took place. The translator, first among all things, should carry out the mission of a transporter. He or she must not do the original works any harm by truncating the trunk or cutting off the stem or branches.

Of all the reasons and purposes of the search, the search for "securing our immortality" is listed on top. The Korean translator, stalling for a while before the bold-typed phrase and shaking his shoulders, decided to ignore the part. How is this possible? On what grounds, and by which rights do the so-called translators commit such illegal behaviors?

By "securing our immortality" the writer meant that people do searches to live longer and healthier lives. They search the Google site to seek out ways to enjoy happy lives, to seek out ways by which how to overcome their illnesses. That kind of search is on the top list.

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“You should take note to the role of the connectives" I say, "which determine the character and meaning of relationships." It often occurs that the misunderstanding of the connectives leads to weird interpretations.

Text:
"Oh, I'm going to be a doctor, too--but in the sense that Keats, Rabelais, Checkhov, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were doctors."
"I thought Keats didn't graduate," Barney remarked.
"He still worked as assistant surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital." Maury's eyes gleamed. "Do you want to write too?" (Doctors, Erich Segal, p.87) (The Korean version1, p.116)

Dano's comments:
Adverb still works as a connective which is retroactively related to the clause previously stated (Keats didn't graduate). It's astonishing to find that the Korean translator of Doctors has shown such brazenness by making a bold rendition of protagonist Keats as a character living in the present. He translated the part at issue to the effect that "he is still working..."

I will make a demonstration of the controversial part by rewriting.
"He still worked as assistant surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital."
=>"Though he didn't graduate, he worked as assistant surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital."
=>"He didn't graduate, but he worked as assistant surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital, nonetheless."

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I discovered and propounded from time to time to his proponents around him that repetition, contraction, summarization, and substitution are four major attributes of the modern English prose. Of all those tactical types of the paragraph development, repetition might be the prototype of the prose skills.

Text:
Of course, for millions of people in developing countries, the quest for material improvement still involves walking to a well, substituting on a dollar a day, plowing a field barefoot behind an ox or gathering wood and carrying it on their heads for five miles. These people still upload for a living, not download. (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman, p.33) (The Korean version, p.82)

Dano's comments:
The bold-typed statement does not carry a particular meaning here in this case. It is nothing but a repetition of the previous statement, or a substitute for what the writer had stated immediately before. It is the change of a mode of statement, that is. So the verb 'upload' literally means that one puts his or her load up on their heads.

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The relational viewpoint of the English language presupposes that every user of the language is armed with the knowledge that it is a system of homographs. In other words, the native speakers of English are considered to know that almost all the English words have plural definitions of their own.

Text:
The free-software person in all of us wants no patent laws. But the innovator in all of us wants a global regime that protects against intellectual property piracy. The innovator in us also wants patent laws that encourage cross-licensing with companies that are ready to play by the rules."Who owns what?" is sure to emerge as one of the most contentious political and geopolitical questions in flat world--especially if more and more American companies start feeling ripped off by more and more Chinese companies. If you are in the business of selling words, music. or pharmaceuticals and you are not worried about protecting your intellectual property, you are not paying attention. (The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman, p.218) (The Korean version, p.288)

Dano's comments:
China is not a country which is dealing in the bargain-priced merchandise any more. They are the great people of a great country who are priding themselves on the sophisticated world-class products. Nevertheless, the prices of their products have been reputed to be comparatively low.

So the Korean translator has been mistaken in that he mistook the meaning of the bold-typed phrase 'ripped off' as overcharged. The fatal mistake has been caused by his mindless application of the established vocabulary information. The meaning of the bold-typed and underlined phrase 'ripped off' should be sought out by its relationship with the previous bold-typed and underlined phrase 'protects against." In other words, more American companies are feeling 'stolen or robbed," because the Chinese do often infringe on the property rights of the American people.

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“Don't make distortions, please!" I Dano oftentimes pleaded to the local translators. I very often called them out at a downtown coffee shop of Seoul or something and protested against their dirty practices. "Why twist facts with impunity?" I used to chide the editors and the translators, or implore the invisible audience in a hollow valley in a hoarse voice.

Text:
"So far it's strictly Mickey Mouse--memorize, memorize, memorize. Am I really going to be a better doctor if I can remember the names of every micron of the body? Any fool could learn this crap by heart."
"That's why there are a lot of foolish doctors, Barn--they know the names of everything and the meaning of nothing. The way I hear it, we won't see an actual sick person for two years."
"Correction, Castellano. Meet me for breakfast tomorrow and you'll encounter a genuine basket case." (Doctors, Erich Segal, p.104) (The Korean version1, p.135)

Dano's comments:
"Brace up for humors," I wish to give a piece of advice or two. For Western humors, particularly for American humors, that is. It's saddening to see that the Korean writers can't get the usual jokes so often and try to twist hilarious trivialities, presenting serious renditions to their local readers. It's been a translational disaster and a cultural deceit.

Are you curious to know to what extent the Korean writer turned serious? She (one of the two woman co-translators) made the protagonist Barney suggest to his boyhood friend Laura she meet him beside the basketball pole set.

Why not see the relationships? Can't you see them? Can't you see that the bold-typed and underlined phrase (made by myself, of course) 'a genuine basket case' is an example of the other bold-typed and underlined phrase 'an actual sick person'? You can't just see the poor basket cases at the expressway bus terminals in Seoul but at the back alleys of the major cities of the world.

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Temporal and spatial relationships should not be dismissed, ignored, or reversed. They should be handled with care.

Text:
University's most famous student, Percy Bysshe Shelley, enrolled in 1810 as a chemistry student. He lasted about a year, expelled not because he had used his knowledge to set up a small still in his room to make liquor, but because of his paper "The Necessity of Atheism." By 1894, Univ had reclaimed Shelley, in the form of a beautiful marble statue of the dead poet, who drowned off the coast of Italy in his late twenties. (My Life, Bill Clinton, p.139) (The Korean version, p.207)

Dano's comments:
I wondered why so many Korean writers liked to involve their imagination into the interpretative works. Here in this case the temporal relationships are very important. Shelley's ouster from the college was caused by his disbelief in God and its public incitement, not by liquor brewery.

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The prevarication by way of equivocation was the revelation of ignorance and the confession of self-deceit. The penchant for prevarication seemed to be characteristic of some Korean translators, by which they seemed to conspire to shroud the readers' heads with fogs of craps in the terrible local version. That's a sheer farce.

Text:
As the summer went on, speculation ran rampant among many in Silicon Valley that the markets would hand Google a long overdue comeuppance. And the naysayers had a point: for the past three and a half years, the technology IPO window had been pretty much nailed shut. Amendments to Google's S1--viewed as milestones in any IPO's progress--were slow to come, and rumors began to surface that the company was having trouble with the technology behind its unique auction process. Furthermore, August loomed, a month when much of Wall Street is on vacation. (The Search, John Battelle, p.221) (The Korean version, p.342)

Dano's comments:
The teachers and the students of the modern English prose should be armed with a certain knowledge of paragraphs, that is, the knowledge about their structure and their development. The first sentence in almost all the instances becomes the topic sentence of the deductive paragraphs, and all the other sentences support the preceding topic.

The rookie translator's nonsensical statements are irritating who have not been trained in the paragraph development and composition. The bold-typed and underlined second sentence supports the topic sentence, that is, the skeptical view that Google's attempt at IPO, or initial public offering, might be frustrated, was considered to be reasonable. The elaboration follows down on.

The bold-typed and underlined 'naysayers' means those who have expressed skeptical views about the expected fate of Google because of its overdue presentation and presumptuous revision to the established IPO window. In terms of syntactic technicalities, the noun phrase, which inevitably necessitates the definite article the as its adjective modifier, is an elaboration, but not a contradiction. You should have seen the Korean version.

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Relationships exist and take place throughout the paragraphs of a particular prose, an essay, an article, or a book writing, that is, Dano says. In other words, there are inter-paragraphical relationships as well as intra-paragraphical relationships, Dano emphasizes.

Text:
Not if the regulators in China are on the take. The head of the China branch of one of the biggest Canadian banks told me in 1997 that the bank transferred several thousand dollars once from its Hong Kong branch to its Shanghai branch and it took eighteen days for the transfer to clear. "We think we know what happened," the banker told me one day over lunch in Shanghai. "Someone in the Central Bank took the money, speculated with it on the Shanghai stock exchange for seventeen days and then put it back on the eighteenth day, when the money showed up in our account." (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman, p.149) (The Korean version, p.270)

Dano's comments:
Relationships are everywhere. In the paragraphs, between paragraphs, and even between books themselves. Nonetheless, the Korean translators have gotten their eyes glued to the particular words, phrases, and sentences that they have been reading. Lift your eyes aloft to the relationships, and you'll see a new world.

Prevarication by equivocation arises because the translator does not see the relationships that the bold-typed and underlined sentence has got. Remember I've told you before that the relationships exist between the paragraphs, and you'll recognize that the bold-typed sentence is related to the last sentence of the previous paragraph.

........The Chinese sign a deal with them, get their technology and then change the rules and tell them to go out. Will they get out alive? (ibid, The Lexus and the Olive Tree) Thus the bold-typed and underlined sentence Not if the regulators in China are on the take is the answer of the last sentence of the previous paragraph.

Not if the regulators in China are on the take is an ellipsis, so the complete form will turn out
=>(You'll) Not (be able to get out alive) if the regulators in China are on the take. The relevant paragraphs mention the kleptocracy rampant in China. By kleptocracy you mean the rule by and custom of stealing and robbing.

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The reader of the English prose as a second language user should get tense a little as to what's similar and what's dissimilar. In short, you should raise the sense of differentiation.

Text:
Once condemned. (1)the prisoners' miseries continued in the transport railroad cars, cattle cars or barges. Subjected to severely overcrowded and underventilated conditions, at extreme temperatures and with insufficient food, they were brutalized by both (2)the common criminals with whom they traveled and the guards. (100 Banned Books, Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald and Dawn B. Sova, p.59) (The Korean version, p.219)

Dano's comments:
The bold-typed and underlined the prisoners(1) mentioned in this case refer to the political prisoners condemned on charges of sedition, who differ from the other bold typed and underlined the common criminals (2) who have been condemned mainly on charges of common crimes of stealth, robbery, and assaults. The political prisoners got brutalized by the common criminals and the guards. The Korean translator equivocated on what turned out to be so simple, which was lousy.

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The destruction of relationships is committed by the Korean translators. And that with impunity. There are supposed to be relationships near at hand, not one thousand miles away.

Text:
Barney thought for a moment of its colloquial sobriquet: "Chateau Loco." For here dwelt the aristocracy of the mad. Or at least the plutocracy. Rumor had it that the residents paid nearly a thousand bucks a week. (Doctors, Erich Segal, p.136) (The Korean version1, p.174)

Dano's comments:
The mental institution is called the Castle of the Mad because the mental patients accommodated in the institution are enjoying the luxury of all sorts of conveniences in everyday lives. They naturally come from the wealthy class of people who are willing to pay inordinate charges. In syntactic terms, the residents stand for the mad, but not the medical doctors. It's been really weird that the Korean translator misinterpreted the sentence at issue to the effect that the medical resident doctors had regular kickbacks.

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English is the language of relationships. If, the mentors and their acolytes of English as a second language, did not wake up to the universal principle, they would be bound to spout off hollow remarks.

Text:
Kleptocracy is the billions of dollars that have been made in corrupt privatization programs throughout Eastern Europe and Russia, where tiny oligarchical elites, often in cahoots with local mafia and government officials, have managed to gain control of the formerly state-owned factories and natural resources at below-market rates, making them overnight billionaires. (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman, p.149) (The Korean version, p.270)

Dano's comments:
In the paragraph at issue the bold-typed and underlined word 'local' doesn't have its own meaning. The lack of the linguistic knowledge incurs disaster. The South Korean translator shows such disaster when he means the neighborhood mafia by the bold-typed and underlined local mafia. It isn't like that, you translator. In short, the word local is related to the previously stated Eastern Europe and Russia. Local means eastern European and Russian, so the phrase "local mafia and government officials' should have read: "...in cahoots with European and Russian mafia and government officials. To those Korean teachers and students who have been strange to such substitution and contraction mode of the English language expression, even the English excerpts of the dissertations take the form of the elementary school writing. That's been a shame.

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It's been a bad practice made by lots of Korean translators. They were used to truncating so many modifiers that their translations used to consist of main title words left bare by themselves. A really bad practice as well as a deception to the innocent readers.

Text:
But what if it were as easy as typing his name into Google? Often, it already is. If your cubicle mate happened to have a messy divorce, one covered in the papers or simple added to digitally available civil case files (many jurisdictions do just that), it won't be very hard to find. Or perhaps he spurned an ex-lover with a blog and a grudge, a lover who has turned their spat into permanent entry in the Database of Intentions. Or maybe your office mate was slapped on the wrist by a professional organization, a rebuke noted in that organization's monthly newsletter, which now lives online. (The Search, John Battelle, p.191) (The Korean version, p.301)

Dano's comments:
The English language is the language of relationships. The Korean translator of the previous material is lacking in the viewpoint. Thus, he has stripped the modifier from the bold-typed and underlined phrase of a messy divorce into a lukewarm word of "a divorce." It's been a ludicrous approach. Modifiers, whether they might be quantifying or qualifying, should not be eliminated from the text in the course of so-called translation.

What is meant by a messy divorce? The concept of a messy divorce is defined in the immediately following sentences (one covered in the papers...) It is a divorce so full of finger-pointings, hatreds, curses, claims and counter-claims that it is covered in the newspapers. The previous paragraph is organized with evident sentences of relationships, that is, the concept-definition relationships.

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Ludicrity sometimes erupts when an interpreter of the original writings gets the relationships wrong.

Text:
The only problem was he spoke so goddamn softly that unless you sat right next to him, even in these tiny dorm rooms where his acolytes would gather, you could miss a pearl or two. Seth would take notes on the lecture and everybody would take notes on Seth. At times it seemed as if they would canonize him, despite his single eccentricity. He would go to bed at nine o'clock--unyielding as Horatius on the bridge, he wouldn't even compromise for nine-fifteen. (Doctors, Erich Segal, p.215) (The Korean version1, p.269)

Dano's comments:
It's been a bad habit for the Korean translators to change an original statement into an utterly different story. That's been so arbitrary. Such a bad practice would exceed the discretion of a translator, or translators.

The bold-typed and underlined clause describes a cordial scene in which a study group of Harvard dorm students are clustered together, but does not mention any attitude they were making. The relationships between characters are physically immediate and close; they sit right next to one brilliant student who is enacting the day's classroom lecture. It's a sheer creation for the Korean translator to the effect that they are listening to the lecture with a greater attention.

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The misunderstanding of relationships between words inevitably leads to a misinterpretation. In terms of human relationships, you should not mistake one twin brother for the other. Much less between parents and their offspring.

Text:
The first humans to reach the Americas, living as hunter-gatherers, arrived in the U.S. Southwest by 11,000 B.C. but possibly earlier, as part of the colonization of the New World from Asia by peoples ancestral to modern Native Americans. Agriculture did not develop indigenously in the U.S. Southwest, because of a paucity of domesticable wild plant and animal species. Instead, it arrived from Mexico, where corn, squash, beans, and many other crops were domesticated--corn arriving by 2000 B.C., squash around 800 B.C., beans somewhat later, and cotton not until A.D. 400. (Collapse, Jared Diamond, p.139) (The Korean version, p.199)

Dano's comments:
You will be flabbergasted to know that the bold-typed and underlined phrase the Americas was taken by a Korean translator to mean the United States. It's so miserable for the so-called translator not to notice the relationships revealed so vividly for him to see. The relationships between the Americas and Mexico are those of the whole and a part. You mean the North and South American continents by the Americas.

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Why lie to the readers? Why bend conscience and twist facts? Why are the Korean translators not loyal to the pursuit of the lexicological meaning of words to begin with?

Text:
Eric Schmidt had no interest in visiting Google even as he walked in to meet with Sergey Brin and Larry Page in December 2000. The first thing he noticed was that they had projected his biography on the wall. He heard that Google was a flaky place, and this seemed to confirm it. "I thought that was really odd," he said. (The Google Story, David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, p.103) (The Korean version, p. 162)

Dano's comments:
I don't think the translator didn't know the lexicological difference between biography and portrait. Then how come he misinterpreted the bold-typed and underlined phrase as to mean "projected his portrait? It's a sheer nonsense. The portrait could be an inclusion of his biography. However, as the biography is to a portrait so is the whole to a part. The Google team had been projecting the visitor's entire life at the time.

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Though it had been a wrong interpretation, it looked just all right on the surface. On the Korean version at least. Not a problem. Almost all the Korean readers will not notice the difference. However, it turned out to be an utterly contradictory version to the original text.

Text:
We had a tougher time when it came to gay rights. Two years later, Attorney General Jim Guy Tucker had spearheaded a new criminal code through the legislature. It simplified and clarified the definitions of more than one hundred years of complicated and overlapping crimes. It also eliminated so-called status offenses, which had been condemned by the Supreme Court. A crime requires committing a forbidden act, intentionally or recklessly; just being something society deems undesirable isn't enough. For example, being a drunk wasn't a crime. Neither was being a homosexual, though it had been before the code was adopted. (My Life, Bill Clinton, p.247) (The Korean version, p.365~p.366)

Dano's comments:

The translator gives a lie to the readers of the Korean version. According to the translator, three protagonists--Attorney General, the Supreme Court, and the writer himself--unanimously agreed on the crminality of the so-called status offenses. Did they?

The bold-typed and underlined (by myself of course) clause said they did not. The Supreme Court had condemned the status offenses. The Korean translator has made a distortion of the clause in question by stating to the effect that "...and it had been made null by the Supreme Court..." The word condemned here means that the court considered it guilty and ruled so.

The English language is the language of relationships. The translator does not have the idea. He or she has not the concept of relationships in mind. Don't you see the relationships between the bold-typed and underlined clause which had been condemned by the Supreme Court and the bold-typed and underlined clause though it had been before the code was adopted. Don't you see?

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Don't you see the relationships about you? Don't you see your immediate relatives living near you? You should make efforts to enhance your abilities to notice the linguistic relationships taking place side by side on the prose, that is, the realistic sentences and paragraphs.

Text:
The PATRIOT Act certainly puts a new spin on the word "search." But this is to be expected, right? After all, if the government has probable cause and a search warrant, nothing has changed, has it? As all good civics students know, the Fourth Amendment continues: "no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." (The Search, John Battelle, p.199) (The Korean version, p.312)

Dano's comments:
At kindergartens, pre-school children learn how to behave as kids. The students of social studies learn how to behave as young men and ladies, that is, how to keep manners. In the same context, the students of civics are taught how to behave as citizens, that is, to learn about the U.S. Constitution or community affairs. The statements show mutual relationships: They define each other.

It has been a sorry thing for the Korean translator to interpret the bold-typed and underlined sentence as to mean "good-natured students..." It's not about students' character. In this case, the adjective 'good' is related to one's abilities. When you say Ann is a good swimmer, you mean that Ann is good at swimming, that is, Ann swims well. In short, the bold-typed and underlined "good civics students" does not mean good-natured students but means the students who are well versed in civics problems.

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Prosaic relationships take place remotely as well as closely. They often sit side by side but they more often than not position themselves miles apart. Figuratively speaking, relatives, whatever miles they live apart, should be called as such.

Text:
(1)He knew what he needed to do, but he also had to persuade Sergey and Larry to accept the necessity of building a business infrastructure. For instance, the financial record-keeping and payroll systems were being run using off-the-shelf software from Quicken, the kind people use to do their own income taxes or operate a very small enterprise. "That was fine for a start-up, but not for this company with 200 employees and $20 million in revenues," said Schmidt.

(2)This turned into a defining battle. Schmidt wanted to bring in a major business and financial record-keeping system from Oracle; that was his job........(The Google Story, David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, p.110) (The Korean version, p. 172)

Dano's comments:
Think relationships. Everything is relationships. The English language as well as the rest of the global languages is the language of the relationships. Is it so hard for you the so-called translator in South Korea to understand that relationships also take place between paragraphs? Just like they function between words, phrases, and sentences?

The bold-typed and underlined statement released in the first sentence of the paragraph (2) is the very windfall of the contentions of the paragraph (1). The sentence speaks to the readers of the book that there arose an acerbic argument between the new CEO of Google, Mr. Schmidt, and the two young founders of Google over the definitions of startups and non-startups.

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Will it be possible for the mankind to track down on the routes of the human terminological development? The efforts could and would have been made, about which Dano has not made any survey. However, in that case, the nominalization might have been a culmination of the human efforts for the linguistic improvement.

Text:
In the bewilderment of her last years, Ursula had had very little free time to attend to the papal education of Jose Arcadio, and the time came for him to get ready to leave for the seminary right away. Meme, his sister, dividing her time between Fernanda's rigidity and Amanta's bitterness, at almost the same moment reached the age set for her to be sent to the nuns' school, where they would make a virtuoso on the clavichord of her. Urusula felt tormented by grave doubts concerning the effectiveness of the methods with which she had molded the spirit of the languid apprentice Supreme Pontiff, but she did not put the blame on the staggering old age or the dark clouds that barely permitted her to make out the shape of things, but on something that she herself could not barely define and that she conceived confusedly as a progressive breakdown of time. "The years nowadays don't pass the way the old ones used to," she would say, feeling that everyday reality was slipping through her hands. (One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, p.245) (The Korean version, p.274)

Dano's comments:
The prevarication by equivocation by Korean translators is a vicious habit to be done away with. What is meant by the prevarication by equivocation anyway? It's a thing of ludicrity between things of normalcy. It's a man of lunacy between the crowds of sanity. Figuratively speaking, it's an occasion you see a woman in bikini among the ladies and the gentlemen in suits and dresses.

The bold-typed and underlined phrase a progressive breakdown of time is the typical case of nominalization. It is a converted contraction represented in nominal form. A progressive breakdown of time can be rewritten as: Time progressively breaks down. What the original writer meant by the bold-typed and underlined phrase of a progressive breakdown of time is elaborated on the one sentence which is immediately followed (the underlined parts by myself).

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Jokes are almost always a problem. South Korean translators have almost always been too sober, that is, too sincere. They tend to make, figuratively speaking, people sober up those who want to be under some influence at times.

Text:
"I don't drink either," Dale said. "(1)But after today, I'm hitting the bottle." From someone with absolutely no sense of humor, this declaration was quite (2)funny. After a good laugh, they settled into a rehash of their first day. Tim had billed 8.6 hours reading the legislative history of an old New York law aimed at discouraging class action lawsuits. Everette had billed 9 hours reading leases. But Kyle and Dale (3)won the game with their descriptions of the dungeon and its thirty-five thousand files. (The Associate, John Grisham, p.185) (The Korean version, p.177)

Dano' comments:
The Korean coffee shop owner, figuratively speaking, has served lukewarm coffees at a time when everybody in the room badly needs strong caffeines. If he were a bartender, he has served a liquor which does not contain any spirits at a time when everybody in the room wants to get drunk.

Though he uses such expressions as "After a good laugh" or "funny" the readers of the Korean version are only perplexed, not finding what makes them laugh and what is so funny. The bold-typed and underlined sentence (1) does not merely carry the same meaning as 'drink.' So the Korean version writer should have delivered the physical connotation of 'hitting the bottle' which could give them a big laugh and, if not, beaming at least.

The South Korean translator should have seen to it that since Dale had made them laugh, the rest of the three characters, Tim, Everette, and Kyle, together with Dale again, would be able to make their efforts to contribute to the elated ambience by relating their own share of hilarious episodes. The Korean version writer has failed to do this task, of course.

The version writer is of course ignorant about the meaning of 'billing', so he fails in conveying why Tim's and Everette's billing is hilarious. A lawyer's act is justified in that his or her act of billing his or her client or clients is reasonable and legal as far as the behavior is done in relation to the courtroom documents of a particular client' or clients' litigation. But some characters of the novel, that is, Tim and Everette do not do billing in such a way, and the rest of the other rookie lawyers are acquiesced and even encouraged to do billing their clients with the utterly irrelevant activities.

The Korean translator is of course mistaken in grasping the original notion of the bold-typed and underlined sentence (3). In brief, in the Korean version, the two characters, Kyle and Dale are only blurting the hollow and utterly ludicrous crap to the effect that "what they had done was topmost." A sheer nonsense, of course. All the character of the one paragraph mentioned above are committed only to contributing to the funny atmosphere, so the relevant phrase "won the game with their descriptions of the dungeon and its thirty-five thousand files" means that they gave the crowd the biggest laugh. In here, the two characters, Dale and Kyle, were giving the description of their work place of the law firm in gloomy yet hilarious way. Don't you see their workplace is described by them as a dungeon, or an underground prison?

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Mohohanmallo erlbeomuriggi, (모호한 말로 얼버무리기), or the prevarication by equivocation by South Korean translators shall not be in sight in the future. Shouldn't be justified anymore. The bad local versions shouldn't be called by the name of bunyeok, a translation or something.

Then how to do to stem the tide of the translation disaster? You should change. The local publishing houses should be changed first which have only been enthused about raking in the blind money with or through a rush job called translation. Local translators should exercise more originality and diligence.

The notes are necessary. The translator's notes are necessary in almost all genres of the original works. Even in some novels, particularly in such novels as you see in the novels by Dan Brown, the note-making job is deemed imperative.

In brief, you should demonstrate your knowledge, that is, you should show to your readers that you have the knowledge about your job, that you're versed in what you're doing. Otherwise, you could be called a hoax, a scam, or a cultural cheat.


Text:
He put down his notes and gazed out at the calm waters of the Potomac passing beneath him. A heavy mist hovered on the surface. Aptly named, Foggy Bottom had always seemed a peculiar site on which to build the nation's capital. Of all the places in the New World, the forefathers had chosen a soggy riverside marsh on which to lay the cornerstone of their utopian society. (The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown, p. 13) (The Korean version, p.28)

Dano's comments:
Mist and fog are synonymous, but the former is distinguished from the latter in that the former contains tiny water drops to a greater degree. Foggy Bottom, as you see in the capitalization of the two words, is a proper noun referring to a specific place so much so that the translator should not have transliterated it. You should've translated it.

When doing the translation work, you should focus on the mutual relationships of the words. Fog corresponds to mist, and the word bottom corresponds to the surface. The local translator of the novel by Mr. Dan Brown is doing a very cursory job out of this.

The adverb aptly is not a mere derivative but an adverb acting as a connective. What does it connect? It connects the immediately preceding statement [A heavy mist hovered on the surface] with the following phrase [Foggy Bottom ]. Let me show you the diagrams indicating these relationships: mist=>fog; surface=>bottom; aptly named=>named after the attribute of the place which is always shrouded with mist....