Why Do I Have To Do This?

Why do I have to do this? To review translation works of Korean authors? To criticize and accuse them of their poor jobs? To announce in public that "This is bull shit!" Or to shout with blood-shot eyes to domestic ears, "Cut the crap, you dullard?"


I begrudge their fame and higher earnings a little bit actually. My righteous mindset rests on the welfare of the pathetic readers who have been taken advantage of their trust and subsequently been ripped off by the ignorant, lazy and cunning translators and their publishers. The truth might lie somewhere in between.


The productivity of Korean translators is so poor and local publishers' disregard of the readers is so severe that it's high time somebody blew a whistle. That some drastic measures have to be taken to remedy the ages-old social malady. Although it might be extremely difficult to provide exact statistics and there might exist some disparities in credentials and productions from translator to translator, My conservative guess is that MTR (message transmittance rate) ranges between 70% and 80%.


What caused these cultural ills to take place? I think that the social practice of mutual concessions and co-defendant mentality might be to blame. What I mean by the social practice of mutual concessions is that members of the Korean society tend to show tolerance and magnanimity for others' mistakes (To err is human!). And what I mean by co-defendant mentality is that responsible social and cultural pundits, including the literati, are inclined to hold "live and let live" attitudes (A translation is a creation, giggling off).


Is there any reason that I don't accede to the establishment and compromise with it? Because I think that folks who earn money should take more or less responsibility for their earnings. The irony is that "the super rich", who have earned their lives through errorful translations, feel little or no remorse for their "sins", much less take a least responsibility.


Somebody does have to be an odd man out, I think, to do the dirty job of taking the sinner to task and awaken the tardy atmosphere of error-ridden translation world. Granted, why do I not do that at home, that is, locally, at the inside, without no further fuss? Why do I have do this vociferously, outside of my country, internationally?


I had done that at the local site:www.etnews.co.kr for a considerable period of nine full months and drawn a muted 90,000 viewers. Jests and ridicules aside, there had been doubts expressed about the efficacies of my performance. Their logical argument had been that if the reviewer and the reviewee argue over their own veracity, who will be there to verify their claims?


That is why I am here on this esteemed Google blog house to talk to the global citizens, especially to the native speakers of the English language. I want to get approval of my job from the American population, especially from the American academia. I hereby ask a sincere question of my Korean nationals studying in the United States or young Korean Americans residing here, who had been "locally and traditionally" trained by mediocre teachers in your motherland, to what degree you can make your job work for you, and to what degree you are succeeding in getting verbal and non-verbal English messages across to you.