One of the natural results of a Korean and a Brit living together is that we often run into communication problems. My wife’s English is very good, and though my Korean is slowly getting better there are still many times when we find that one of us just can’t understand exactly what the other means.
We spend a lot of time trying to reach mutual understanding, but it sometimes feels as though the emotions or concepts I try to convey in English have no accurate equivalent in Korean. In the same way, as I’ve tried to understand what my wife’s getting at when she explains something in English I’ve realised that I have to remove myself from English and try to think like a Korean to get there.
Naturally this is easier said than done.
Although it’s bound to be difficult I find it hard to understand how people can marry someone with a native tongue different to their own and proceed not to make a real attempt to learn or understand their partner’s language. It seems to suggest they don’t really want to know the way their partner thinks and feels or why they act the way they do. I would suggest that mutual understanding adds strength to any relationship; mutual acceptance comes a poor second best.
Thankfully, as well as being exceedingly difficult (or rather, challenging), it’s great fun trying to understand each other better. When we wrestle with each other over a phrase for an hour or more and finally reach agreement on what on earth we mean everything clicks into place and we find our struggle has brought us closer together. Better yet, we gain a new way to accurately communicate our desires, needs or qualms. Great!
As my wife and I have been pushing towards mutual understanding we were both struck with just how interesting the differences between our languages and cultures are and couldn’t think of a better way to help people understand Korea better than trying our best to explain some untranslatable Korean.
Before getting into it though, I need to spend a moment talking about the word “untranslatable”.
Many people will say that there isn’t actually any such thing as an “untranslatable” word. It seems fair to say that every concept or idea a language holds can be conveyed into any other language.
However, while the effectual meaning behind a word can be conveyed, the cultural significance behind a word can be lost. While we can understand the concept behind a Korean word in English it can take a paragraph to do so. Even when we find a close equivalent to a word the feelings and emotions that a native speaker will experience when they think about or say that word can often be appreciated but not really felt.
For example, the Korean word for friend (친구, chingu) is very easy to translate, but you lose a huge amount of culture in doing so. It’s certainly correct that a “chingu” is a friend, but Koreans will only refer to someone the same age as them as a “chingu”. Two Koreans can seem very close friends but will deny being “chingu” because anyone older or younger than you has to be referred to by a different word.
Friends in English, but not in Korean when you take into account their age difference.
In this example the full meaning of the word “chingu” has not been carried over in translation. I intend to use the word untranslatable with the incomplete understanding a translation often necessitates in mind.
So this marks the start of an experiment to discuss and explain the meaning behind a range of untranslatable words, phrases or ideas that my wife and I have found difficult, interesting or funny to get to the bottom of.
We don’t claim to have everything solved or to hold the way for you to understand Korean or Koreans, but hopefully we can give you something to grasp hold of before trying to discover for yourself how they play out in real life.
If there’s an interesting Korean word you’ve come across and want to share please leave a comment or shoot us an email at tomandemjay@gmail.com. Feel free to do the same if you read what we’ve written and have thought of a better translation or equivalent that we for some reason failed to come up with.
No, really, go ahead! We need your ideas 😀
Cunning Culture 