Korean Job Discussion Forums

[changwonteacher]

As an English teacher in Korea, I'm starting to learn Korean (just a beginner), but I've been thinking ahead (I realise it will take me years to achieve anything close to fluency) and I'm curious about the job situation for native-level speakers or English who also have strong Korean skills. Do you think I could easily find translation work (should I get to this level)?

With translation work, it's usually the case that the translation is done into the translators native language. But from a lot of the English translations I have seen, it's clear that this work has been done by Koreans (who do not have a native grasp of the language). Is this due to the lack of good KOREAN-ENGLISH (native language: English) translators? Or do Korean companies just think (wrongly) that a Korean can do the job fine?

Do you know anything about this?

[Poemer]

The shoddy translation work you have seen is the result of companies being to cheap/disorganized to get things translated properly. Why hire someone who is qualified and pay them for this work when you can just give it to somebody already on staff and have them do it for free?

[dossi]

I would guess that some prominent translators are not Koreans but native English speakers. I had a prof who happened to be an English woman but did translations from Korean to English including old Korean literature that many Koreans can't even really understand.