Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Jane]

On the way to work this morning on the subway (Line 1) I look up and see this ad for Wall Street English.

It's a mock picture of Koreans in a boardroom with this girl with stick pointing to a chart and saying to her boss who is sitting at a table:"How do you think about this project, Mr.Lee.", or something to this effect. The boss is sort of cowering because he's embarrassed he can't speak English, and says:" Umm, yes. Yes. Yes."

How do you think about....!!!

This is an English language school and they can't get their one sentence on an advertisement right.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting awefully tired of my native language being bastardized more often then not.

Shame on you, Wall Street English.

[Jeff's Cigarettes]

I THINK HE LOST HIS TRAIN OF THOUGHT AS HE WAS DAYDREAMING ABOUT HER HITTING HIM W/ THE STICK ON HIS RUMP.

[Scotticus]

[weatherman]

So... the hot chick is the project....?

[Beej]

[.res.ipsa.loquitor]

[jkelly80]

I don't understand why they don't hire people to proofread this stuff. I guess proofreading is an acknowledgment of imperfection, which causes a crippling loss of face.

[Pojogae]

[jkamphof]

The lack of proofreading blows my mind, just last week our school published a new ad for the March session in our city and they handed it out to all the foreign teachers AFTER it was published...we counted 10 horrific spelling and grammar mistakes.

Also a few years ago my school had a big speech contest which had hundreds of kids from around Korea the massive banner for the event said "Welcome to the Enlgish Speech Contest" The spelt English wrong and not until the foreign staff showed up had any Korean noticed...

I'm sure nearly everyone has a million stories about this but I would never assume my Korean is good enough to avoid spell check....God, my english is bad enough to avoid a spell check!!!

[Xuanzang]

Aren't they losing money? Probably first cut was to the proof reading department. The other foreigners who are getting screwed over simply didnt give a shit.

[R-Seoul]

Speaking of Asian arrogance/fear of loss of face; I'm sure many of you have taken the maglev high-speed train in Shanghai. What does the pre-recorded on board announcement say? "Dear Passenger, welcome to take our maglev train....".
Just think of the millions of dollars and countless years spent on constructing the worlds fastest train a showpiece for the new China and then not to take the 2 minutes to ask a native speaker to quickly proofread the English which every foreign visitor will hear whilst on-board the damn thing. It boggles the mind, it really does.

[ED209]

[freshking]

Anyone ever had the pleasure to read the Korea Kid's Times? I read it once a week with my students and it's always a good laugh. The "editor" they have at that paper is a joke.

[Dysupes]

It's important not to forget that another significant reason these mistakes happen is not only due to the freakish desire to avoid a loss of face but also the fact that the boss decided a month or two before that he might need flyers and then deigned to inform his staff of that fact 2 to 3 days before the flyers went out. Also, some of these bosses write the damn things themselves to show their workers how they don't fool around and of course this means that the workers are forbidden from pointing out any errors in said text, culturally speaking.

jkamphof said:

[Ukon]

Did anybody notice the fact that the young women was the boss of a bunch of ajoessi perhaps signifying a wider acceptance of women in higher roles in the work place rather than being regulated to pink collar jobs?

Also, Wall street english like many companies probaly outsource advertisement and graphic design to third party companies....where they will be handled by all the art kids you knew in high school who sucked at every subject except art.