Korean Job Discussion Forums

[htrain]

Have you been the victim of direct translation? Has someone said something to you that you found incredibly offensive and it turned out they didn't mean it?

Someone told me that byungshin means crazy so I called one of my students byungshin and laughed.. as you can imagine that went over like a turd in a punchbowl. That was during my frist month here, I've since learned to never trust what other people tell me and look everything up and triple-cross reference it.

Yes, I got calls from mothers, yes, about 5 middle school girls shrieked in agony while 4 boys laughed their @$$es off.

Tell us your story, I bet there are some good ones.

[Bibbitybop]

"Everyone needs an English name. What about 'Jill'?"

[Tony_Balony]

Spanish has a good one if not the best. An~os/years/Anus. Tolerant local print media often likes to go Latin when a local Latin community orgaization has some kind of anniversary. The often don't have a type set or culture knowledge that has them print the tilde"~" over the en-yea. That results in a wish of "Happy 10th Anus".

[htrain]

[wylies99]

[Atavistic]

I once said "my house hurts." Guess what I was trying to say?

[ajuma]

I just corrected a writting assignement where the girl wrote "I hope I did well on my testes." Cracked me up!