Korean Job Discussion Forums

[robot]

I was just studying at a cafe in the lovely Beomgye station area. Of course, up on the wall in huge font was some Konglish gibberish. This time it read:

"Caf'e Comeon. The cappucion is not being sweeter scull bubble than. Fragrance of the life which is deep the coffee than."

Seemingly another bablefish casualty.

You can kinda see the process by which the writer ended up with this mangled sentence. A misspelling of "cappucino", wrongly opting for the present continuous in translating, "than" in front of the noun just as "보다" is in korean, etc.

But I wanna understand more deeply how this atrocity of a sentence -- and others like it -- came to be by understanding the reasoning by which they were translated. Where does the "scull (skull?) bubble" part come in? And what would be the best Korean to English translation for this sentence?

I'd also like to see other examples of Konglish sentences + dissections that explain how they came to be. That way I won't just roll my eyes when I see Konglish -- I'll appreciate why it exists.

ROBT.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Zolt]

I concur, don't waste your time trying to figure it out... just take a picture and post it here!

www.engrish.com

[JeJuJitsu]

What would these 2 words "spell like" in Hangul?

--Cannibal
--Carnival

I ask because I saw "carnival" written in Hangul, and they ommitted the "r."

[KOREAN_MAN]

Konglish is usually words with English origins. Some examples are,

사이다 (cider) = Sprite-like beverage
리모콘 (remocon) = remote control
비닐백 (vinyl bag) = plastic bag

A lot of weird English sentences can be found in English notebooks as well. They are not really considered Konglish though.

[robot]

thx for the replies.

i'm taking liberties with the term "konglish" to describe poorly translated english from korean.

true, in its most commonly used sense the term refers to english words that are modified and taken into the korean language. but it's a flexible word, i think.

either way, i don't wanna get sidetracked by nomenclature, as i'm moreso interested about how this mangled english came about.

it's definitely babelfish gibberish, YTB, but its author's intended message must have made sense, right?

my questions: what was this message? how did babelfish come up with these specific words? what word translates to "skull bubble"? in other examples of this kind of gibberish, can we piece togther the author's intended message by un-translating it?

dudes, there's gotta be at least one equally nerdy person out there who's interested in this sorta thing...

ROBT.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I think you are on a hopeless quest if you want to understand babelfish-type gibberish. If however, you want to try to understand Korean better by reading Konglish (bad English), there is something to that.

Good luck.

[blackjack]

scull can mean drink rapidly (one shot )

[robot]

[Peeping Tom]

[Ya-ta Boy]

[jajdude]

[Hater Depot]

I've seen the same sentence in that cafe ComeOn. I too was struck by the nerdy idea that it's a result of dumb literal translation and that it could be reverse-engineered. So it's not just you.

Also see this.

http://wiki.galbijim.com/Transference_error

[ernie]

for me konglish (or kong-guh-lish-ee) is more about being unable to make most consonant blends (sn,sk,sl,cr,etc) and not being used to ending words with most consonant sounds (t,k,g,ch,sh,etc)...

i love how koreans can take a simple, one syllable word like 'skate' and turn it into 4! 'suh-kay-ee-tuh'

i also wonder when they're going to unify the way they translate english words into korean and vice versa...