The Polyglot Alexander Arguelles: Living on "unemployment checks and Korean translation work"

Alexander Arguelles

Wikipedia

In a book review by Peter Constantine for the NYT, "The Art of Mastering Many Tongues" (January 20, 2012), we learn of Michael Erard's search for true language virtuosos, genuine polyglots who have mastered multiple languages, a quest that Erard writes about in Babel No More and that led him to Berkeley, as Constantine informs us:

One polyglot . . . [whom Erard] meets, Alexander Arguelles, who lives in Berkeley "on unemployment checks and Korean translation work," shows that anyone who hopes to achieve fluency in more than six languages must dedicate himself to the task rigorously -- in fact almost exclusively. Arguelles keeps his languages in shape by subjecting himself to an unforgiving schedule, keeping spreadsheets that record the hours and minutes he spends on each one. Arguelles "tracks his linguistic progress through the hours as saints once cataloged their physical self-sacrifices," Erard writes. Of 4,454 hours of language study Arguelles did over a period of 456 days, he spent 456 hours on his native language, English, and also 456 on Arabic, and then a descending number of hours on the remaining 50 languages on his spreadsheet. Though his learning techniques may seem strange, they also appear to be effective. In one, called "shadowing," students listen to language recordings on a portable player while briskly walking in a public place, gesticulating energetically as they shout out the foreign words and phrases they are listening to. Though one is bound to make a spectacle of oneself, this technique seems to help the beginner shed some of the self-consciousness connected with speaking a foreign language.

That's the very man in the photo above. Our globe-trekking paths have crossed, apparently, both of us having spent time in Berkeley. Arguelles is probably joking about the unemployment checks, for Wikipedia shows him more gainfully employed than that. He may have good advice for language learning, but I don't intend to take him up on shadowing. If I tried that technique here in Seoul to work on Korean -- "walking in a public place, gesticulating energetically . . . [and] shout[ing] out . . . [Korean] words and phrases" -- I'd be committed to an asylum . . . by my wife! Not that such a fate would necessarily be much different than the mad life I already lead, confined here in the bedlam called Seoul.

I wonder if Arguelles used his shadowing technique here in Korea. Wikipedia refers to his "his years of residence in South Korea," during which he studied "a wide range of languages." A citation is supplied that leads to a biographical entry by Dr. Arguelles in which Wikipedia's information is confirmed:

In order to live . . . [in Korea], I obtained a faculty position at Handong University on the eastern coast of the country. This university had only been founded the year before, and they needed somebody to develop and lead a foreign language program, so my initial duties were to teach French, Spanish, and German . . . . [To] get down to serious language study . . . . Handong . . . was exactly what I needed . . . , for the campus was on an isolated hill amidst pine and bamboo forests and rice fields with a view of the Pacific Ocean from my back porch. Furthermore, it soon became clear that, while the university was recruiting foreign faculty to give it international stature, we were viewed as outsiders and thus completely shut out of the administrative decision making process. Other people found this intolerable and soon left, but I turned the situation on its head by reasoning that as my sole duty was to teach languages, I could devote myself entirely to their study on my own . . . . Initially, of course, I focused on Korean and, after I got grounded, on Classical Chinese and Japanese in a comparative context. However, I also ranged very widely through the world of languages . . . . This period came to a close when I belatedly sat down with a calculator and did some serious time management projections. Developing structural knowledge and conversational ability in a language and refining and maintaining that ability can be achieved with just 15 or 20 minutes a day, each and every day, over a period of years. However, developing deeper knowledge and above all enjoying reading the literature of a language requires more like an hour a day, and there are all too few of these . . . . I . . . began to allow myself to simply enjoy reading in my more familiar ones. I also began to "get a life" by getting married, siring a son, and paying more attention to my career by writing and publishing more . . . . [I know many languages, but] in a class all by itself, there is Korean. I lived in its land for nine years, and when I left I took it with me personified in my wife. I have published numerous reference works about it and produced scholarly translations of it, and I have proven time and again that I can handle any situation life throws at me in it, and yet -- there is still so much I do not know.

Our paths truly have crossed! He seems to have been more successful, however, particularly in learning Korean. If he used his shadowing technique in Korea, I suppose Handong's isolation made that practice more comfortable.

But I'm almost motivated to again attempt learning Korean since Arguelles insists that mastering the tongue is mainly just a matter of hard work.

Almost . . .

"Korean is the world's most superior language"

Professor Sohn Ho-min

University of Hawaii

Photo by Lee Sang-sub

Korea Herald

Astounding news from respected University of Hawaii professor of linguistics Sohn Ho-min:

"When we say Korean is superior, we are basing this on scientific examination. The Korean language's method of making sound through a combination of vowels and consonants is very scientific and economical, even."

And we can believe it because in this Korea Herald article, "Korean language scientifically superior," the reporter, Shin Hae-in, assures us that:

"As a scholar who has spent the past four decades studying his mother-tongue and language in general, professor Sohn Ho-min should know what he's talking about when he says Korean is the world's most superior language."

Unfortunately, the article never explains in what way the "combination of vowels and consonants" in Korean is "scientifically superior" because the term "scientific" remains undefined, unless this has some connection to "economical," but that term seems to be a separate adjective, intended to describe the language, not to define "scientific."

Moreover, I have to wonder if this reporter has really understood Professor Sohn Ho-min. Perhaps the good professor actually is a linguistic chauvinist, but a close reading of the entire article does not turn up an exact quote with Sohn claiming that "Korean is the world's most superior language." The reporter supposedly paraphrases Sohn as saying this, but no quote is provided.

I presume that Sohn was speaking in Korean, and I suspect that Sohn was talking not about the Korean language (한국말, Hangungmal), but about the Korean alphabet (한글, Hangul), instead. In that case, the statement by Sohn would read:

"The Korean alphabet's method of making sound through a combination of vowels and consonants is very scientific and economical, even."

If Sohn said that and maintained merely that "When we say the Korean alphabet is superior, we are basing this on scientific examination," then his statement is more reasonable, for he's not speaking of a natural language but of an invented alphabet, and he does not directly state that the Korean alphabet is "the world's most superior" alphabet.

Sohn might, of course, actually mean that it is "the world's most superior" alphabet, and if so, then his statement is the problematic sort of nationalist claim that Koreans often make about Korea's writing system, i.e., Hangul, but offering only reasons that seem unconvincing to most non-Koreans.

But I'd need to know exactly what Sohn claimed.

Linguistic Disability: Not an Excuse?

Google Translate
The Real Expert

Wikipedia

In reaction to a recent article by Daniel Pipes at National Review Online, "Arabist Snobs: Languages are helpful, but don’t guarantee good analysis" (November 22, 2011), a dispute broke out over at the Marmot's Hole concerning the necessity of knowing the language of a country before passing oneself off as an expert, with some commenters implying that without knowledge of the language, an individual would have almost nothing of value to say, and suggesting that anyone who's lived in Korea for a decade or more really has no excuse for not knowing the language. Being one of those without excuse for my linguistic ignorance, I chose to take up the gauntlet, and wrote:

Some of us came to Korea at an older age, are very busy with work, and perhaps have little talent for learning foreign languages.

That describes me.

Of course, I don't claim to be a Korea expert . . . though after being with a Korean woman for nearly twenty years, living constantly in Korea for over ten years, teaching Korean students almost daily for over ten years, reading about Korean issues daily for over ten years, working with my wife as a translation team for articles and books from Korean into English for nearly ten years, and serving off and on as a Daesan Foundation judge concerning the literary quality of translated Korean literature for about five years, among other things, I might occasionally venture an opinion about Korea.

I'd also add that if we were to limit ourselves to expressing opinions only upon topics that we’ve studied deeply enough to be considered experts, we wouldn't have much to say, nor would there be much intercommunication across boundaries of expertise.

My friend Hamel, who is brilliant at languages and speaks flawless Korean, responded:

[I]t might not be unreasonable to expect that [such] a person would know more than taxi/supermarket Korean.

I replied:

Hamel, just read the first part again:

"Some of us came to Korea at an older age, are very busy with work, and perhaps have little talent for learning foreign languages.

That describes me."

Those of you with a gift for foreign languages simply have no experience with how difficult learning a foreign language can be for some of us.

You object that "it might not be unreasonable to expect that a person would know more than taxi/supermarket Korean."

Perhaps not, but life is not always reasonable, nor are talents reasonably distributed across populations.

Just try to imagine something for which you have no talent and which you find deeply frustrating. Perhaps math or chemistry or analytic philosophy. Could you master it? Perhaps . . . if you made it your consuming passion. But doing so would require all your time and energy.

For some of us, learning a foreign language is like that.

I don't doubt that those individuals with great linguistic ability, who can pick up a language within a year or so, are baffled at those of us who can't learn a language without years of intensive work, but there it is.

I'll just have to keep relying on Google Translate . . . and on Sun-Ae, my beloved Wortschatz.

Author Shin Kyung-sook: "meaning . . . lost or misconstrued"?

Shin Kyung-sook

(Image from JoongAng Daily)

I've recently drawn attention to Shin Kyung-sook's novel Please Look after Mom, which has enjoyed such a popular reception in the US, and I've made something of an effort to read every newspaper article coming to my attention that appears in an English version here in Korea about her and her novel in its English translation.

I therefore read with interest an interview by Shin Joon-bong, "Korean author finds stardom in U.S." (JoongAng Daily, April 27, 2011, page 9), particularly its words on the issue of translation and 'translatability', only to find myself dismayed by this remark, reportedly uttered by Shin with reference to her role in the translation of her novel from Korean to English:

While I was involved [in the translation project], I've come to realize Korean is the best form of language from a literary point of view.

I did a double take. I stopped reading. I read again. I thought, "Surely, I've misread that." But multiple re-readings offered the same inescapable hermeneutic: Korean literary chauvinism of the worst sort.

The translation, however, sounded odd in its grammatical structure, conjoining the past passive conjugation of the temporal clause with the present perfect conjugation of the main clause in an impossible combination, but grammar aside, I couldn't bring myself to believe that Shin could be so ignorant as to utter such an arrogant assertion in the original Korean. I therefore inquired of my wife as to what the writer had actually stated in her native Korean. Here's what my wife found in the Korean original at the same site:

이번에 다시 한번 우리말이 정말 아름답다, 많은 것을 포용한다는 생각을 하게 됐다. 문학적 표현에 더없이 좋은 언어다.

This translates as follows:

While I was involved [in the translation project], I again came to realize that Korean is a beautiful language -- even for encompassing many things. It is of the highest capacity for literary expression.

Far more acceptable. The other translation -- in the JoongAng Daily -- is dreadful and inadvertently presents Shin in a exceedingly negative light. This translation offered by my wife has Shin merely affirming that Korean can handle literary expression just as well as the best of literary languages. In other words, Korean is not inferior in this respect. Such a reading fits better with Shin's immediately following statement:

Many of my American readers tell me that the sentences are beautiful and they even linger in their mind. Although some words are replaced or changed, the translation still keeps the original beauty of Korean words, I believe.

If the "translation . . . keeps the original beauty," then English cannot be inferior "from a literary point of view."

Whoever translated the JoongAng Daily version was not quite competent enough to express the Korean meaning in English -- and lacked even competence sufficient enough to provide a grammatically correct complex sentence. Or at the very least, there's surely an editing error behind that clunky sentence.

Whatever the explanation, this is embarrassing -- for the JoongAng Daily, of course, but potentially even more so for Shin Kyung-sook, since it attributes to her a chauvinistic literary view that she does not hold!

The error is also hugely ironic, particularly for an interview that makes such an issue of 'translatability'.

Translation Teams: Korean Literature

Jean Bellemin-Noël and Choe Ae-young

Korean-French translators

Seoul Plaza Hotel, Seoul

Photo by Claire Lee

(Image from The Korea Herald)

Although I was invited to the 18th Daesan Literary Award ceremony last Friday because of my occasional work for the Daesan Foundation in judging the literary quality of Korean literature translated into English, I didn't attend because I was too busy with the student essays that come up around this time of the semester and the various recurrent editing duties that I've taken on over the years, so I didn't have the opportunity of meeting Jean Bellemin-Noël and Choe Ae-young, the translating team who received this year's Daesan Literary Award for their translation of Yi In-seong's novel Wanting to Go Insane, Yet Unable (미쳐버리고 싶은, 미쳐지지 않는) from Korean into French: Interdit de Folie.

My loss.

But I read with interest Claire Lee's article for the Korea Herald, "French-Korean duo shares art of co-translating," because she interviewed the two translators and presented a summary of their working method:

Together, the two have developed an original, effective process of co-translating. First, Choe translates the entire Korean text to French, with a long list of footnotes that contain explanations of cultural context, synonyms of major words, and alternative ways of interpreting the text. Bellemin-Noël then revises the first draft and rewrites the text into more refined French, taking Choe's footnotes into consideration. Then the "talk" begins. "From this stage we wouldn't use my first translated draft at all," Choe said. "We'd discuss extensively comparing the original Korean text and the second translated version which has been revised by Dr. Bellemin-Noël, for the final copy that would compromise the two drafts."

Bellemin-Noël said though the two discuss their work in a "cheerful mood" 90 percent of the time, the mood can get very tense for the remaining 10 percent. "I try to keep the original context of the Korean text as much as possible while Dr. Bellemin-Noël brings the perspective of French readers," Choe explained. "This process requires a lot of compromising and tough decisions."

This description of their process interests me for its similarities and differences with the process that my wife Sun-Ae and I work through in our own translation efforts. Moreover, according to Claire Lee, "Bellemin-Noël has almost no knowledge of the Korean language," which I find quite heartening, personally, since I'm in the same position of ignorance. Anyway, our process is somewhat different. Sun-Ae has a doctorate in German literature but translates into serviceable English that gets better with each passing year. I rework her translation, trying to reword it with an ear to literary quality in English. Sun-Ae then reads my reworked version, checking for mistakes of understanding on my part, which she and I then discuss. Afterwards, I re-read the text carefully, listening for awkward expressions, which I rework. Sun-Ae re-reads after that, checking again that the translation remain true to the original Korean, and we discuss any difficulties.

What strikes me as a significant difference between our method and theirs is the degree of informality to ours. I think that ours is less formal because we're a married couple and work five feet apart at desks facing one another, an arrangement that allows us to query each other any time either of us encounters a translation problem.

But we might have something to learn from the process that Choe and Bellemin-Noël pursue . . .

Foreigners and Foreignness in Korean Eyes

Essential Foreigner

But a 'Multicultural' Friend?

(Image from The Free Dictionary)

Brian Deutsch, over at his blog Brian in Jeollanam-do, asks an interesting question about the Korean word for "foreigner": 외국인 (wei-guk-in).

Can wei-guk-in ever refer to a Korean?

The question arises because we non-Koreans expats here in Korea receive the impression that wei-guk-in refers only to non-Koreans. Brian cites a passage from an article by David Kosofsky, "Exploring Korean Culture Through Korean English," which appeared in Korea Journal nearly 20 years ago (Volume 30, Number 11, November-December, 1990, pages 69-83). Brian directs our attention to page 75 for Kosofsky's experience with the Korean concept of "foreigner" (transliteration and translation added):

[I]n a Korean restaurant in San Francisco, . . . I was eating dinner with a young Korean man doing graduate studies at Berkeley. Pointing to a group of non-Asian diners at a nearby table, he remarked, "A lot of foreigners come to this restaurant." It was all I could do to continue chewing my 냉면 (naeng-myun, i.e., "cold noodles") without blurting out, "You're absolutely right, Mr. Kim, and you're one of them!" Apparently there is a dissonance between the English word, foreigner, and the Korean conceptual model.

Kosofsky then adds:

In English, the word refers to an abstract relationship, not an intrinstic attribute. Nobody is inherently a foreigner; anyone can become on simply by crossing a national border. Foreignness is a question of context, not essence.

The implication here is that Koreans consider foreignness an essential quality of non-Koreans. This sounded plausible, but I wondered if it were true, so I asked the first two native speakers of Korean that I could find and posted the results in a comment at Brian's blog:

I asked my wife and daughter about this, and they insist, as native speakers of Korean, that 외국인 (wei-guk-in) can refer to Koreans, too.

Some Koreans might have intellectual difficulties with this concept of Koreans as 외국인 (wei-guk-in), but I admit to calling various Europeans 'foreigners' while I was in Europe -- usually, but not always, as a joke.

I think that this is more an issue of provincialism than of semantics, for if my wife and daughter are correct, then 외국인 (wei-guk-in) can refer to a Korean outside of Korea.

Perhaps we need to ask more Koreans about this.

I therefore left Brian's blog and emailed a couple of Korean friends. First, I asked Dr. Suh Ji-moon, noted translator and a professor of English at Korea University about this, and she replied (parenthetical details added):

As for your query, I myself would never refer to an overseas Korean as a 'foreigner' (외국인, wei-guk-in), except as a figure of speech, so to say -- for example, 'why, he's almost a foreigner' (i.e., "almost a wei-guk-in"). But of course . . . young people may have a different concept of the word.

I therefore also asked a somewhat younger professor at Korea University, Dr. Moon Hi-Kyung, also of the English Department, and she wrote (transliterations and other parenthetical remarks added):

About your query -- an intriguing point. I would say that 외국인 (wei-guk-in) is a term which is used ambigously and could have two different meanings: it is used mostly to indicate a racial difference, so even if you (i.e., meaning not ethnic Koreans) are Korean nationality, you would still be a 외국인 (wei-guk-in). But of course in a stricter sense and when one is talking about nationality, then we talk about 외국인 (wei-guk-in, i.e., outside-country-person) and 내국인 (nae-guk-in, i.e., inside-country-person). But the former (i.e., racial) category is more usual in everyday conversation, I think.

Meanwhile, back over at Brian's blog, the discussion had continued. The learned Gomushin Girl wrote (referring to me in her comment as "HJH"):

Etymologically, it breaks down thusly:

外/외/wei/outside (same as in 외출: outing and 외도: go astray/wrong course)

國/국/guk/country

人/인/in/person

The question is whether the 國 component should be seen as possessive, as "my country" in reference to the speaker. In that case, then yes, calling all non-Koreans "foreigner" would be the correct way to use this word. However, I'm inclined to agree with HJH in that this use is unthinking and provincial, and not intrinsic. There are Koreans who are linguistically cautious and avoid using the word indiscriminately, and then there are Koreans for whom it works for any non-Korean, anywhere, anytime.

I note in passing the connection between being "foreign" and "going astray" -- but this is a point peculiar to the original Chinese term (and observe the irony that 외국인 (wei-guk-in) is a foreign term, borrowed from the Chinese language). Gomushin Girl's main point is that the term 외국인 (wei-guk-in) does not intrinsically refer to a non-Korean.

The equally learned Sonagi, however, differs a bit on this point (transliterations and translations added):

Your wife and daughter are correct that the dictionary definition allows for this usage, but I have only ever heard or read Koreans using the words 외국인 (wei-guk-in) and 외국사람 (wei-guk sa-ram, i.e., "foreign person") to refer to non-Koreans. Even ethnic Korean residents and citizens of foreign countries are usually distinguished as 한인 (han-in, i.e., Korean person), 한국계 (han-guk-gye, i.e., "ethnic Korean"), 교포 (gyo-po, i.e., "overseas Korean"), and 동포 (dong-po, i.e., "overseas Korean").

Unlike English speakers, Koreans will refer to a non-Korean as a "foreigner" even when the nationality is known. While retelling experiences abroad, Koreans have called Australians, Canadians, and Americans "foreigners." The Koreans knew these people were locals. An English speaker would refer to a German, a Japanese, or a Mexican as such and never use the word "foreigner" to refer to specific person of a specific nationality. Koreans will, too, but they will also call specific persons of a specific known nationality "foreigners."

The general Korean worldview can be thought of as a Venn diagram. In one circle are ethnic Koreans with Korean citizenship. In the other, are non-ethnic Koreans with foreign citizenship. In the middle are ethnic Koreans with foreign citizenship and Korean citizens with partial or non-Korean ancestry. Because your wife and children are part of a multicultural family, their worldview is probably not representative or typical of Koreans.

Sonagi may be correct about my wife and daughter, but I have also asked my class of about 25 students at Ewha Womans University, and these young native speakers agreed that 외국인 (wei-guk-in) can refer to Koreans as well as to non-Koreans, so the younger generation might hold more flexible views. (Or they might have been telling me what they thought that I wanted to hear.)

Language use reflects how people think, I suppose, and while many (perhaps most) Koreans may still speak as if "foreignness" were an essential quality of non-Koreans, the term 외국인 (wei-guk-in) can be used more flexibly (as the Chinese linguistic roots demonstrate) and is perhaps coming to be used to refer to Koreans in some contexts . . . but more investigation is needed on this intriguing point.

I lack the Korean linguistic skills for this sort of research endeavor, but I think that a good, concrete question to ask individual Koreans would be the following (composed with the help of my daughter, Sa-Rah):

Could you, as a Korean visiting a non-Korean country, say, "이 나라에서 나는 외국인이다" (e nara-esuh na-nun wei-guk-in e-da, i.e., "I am a foreigner in this country")?

With appreciation to my daughter Sa-Rah for the Korean sentence, apology to Korean experts for my poor transliteration, and appeal to everyone interested for their additional insights on this vexed cultural-linguistic issue.