By Jason Lim
When I was working as the chief of staff for the founder of an international consulting firm, I had an opportunity to bid out a contract for the construction of a mid-size real estate development in Arizona. On the appointed date and time, several general contracting and architectural firms came and presented their plans, all touting their experience and trustworthiness in sincere but predictable ways.
However, one small-sized firm stood out. Knowing that we were representing a Korean interest, the presenters for this firm, which included the president of the company, had their business cards translated into Korean. During the introductions before the presentation began, the president of the firm proceeded to personally walk over to each member of the evaluation team and proudly hand out his business card.
It was obvious that he was expecting smiles of appreciation for the effort, if not outright thanks for his thoughtfulness. Unfortunately, what he got were guffaws of laughter from the evaluation team. The business cards, which must have been machine translated, told us in Korean that he was the president of a country, not the president of his firm.
As you might know, the Korean language uses a wholly different word to denote the president of a country as opposed to the president of a small construction firm, although it's the same word in English. While this might have been an innocent and even endearing mistake in junior high school second-language class, it certainly did not lend credibility to a company that wanted investors to trust them with delivering a $30-million construction project on time and budget. This was a classic example of a good-faith effort backfiring because of a simple mistake in translation.
Of course, in a global context, the larger problem is usually the other way around: translating the local, indigenous language into English. With English being the Lingua Franca of the new world order, the importance of presenting your information in proper and correct English cannot be overestimated. Even more importantly, the language must be crafted and presented in a contextually appropriate fashion across functional areas and cultural understandings; otherwise, what you say might be grammatically correct but not contextually or culturally correct, which can be far more important when it comes to international communication.
In particular, good translation into English is actually a critical issue for non-governmental organizations (NGO) in non-English speaking countries seeking international awareness and support for their causes.
I have personally witnessed how good English translations helped raise the profile of a Korean NGO. Within a few months of having their weekly newsletter translated into English, Good Friends, a North Korea human rights organization, became one of the most frequently quoted organizations when it came to North Korean issues. It wasn't that Good Friends suddenly began to enjoy privileged access to North Korea that other organizations didn't have; it was just that it could make accessible what they always had to a much wider international audience and became more relevant as a result.
This is why what Eugene Yi has done is so important. Yi founded the Princeton University Language Project, or PULP, when he was just a sophomore at Princeton University, as a way to practice his Chinese language skills. But it quickly grew into a serious effort that is fulfilling a critical need for international NGOs looking to gain the attention of international audiences for their work.
PULP offers free translations to NGOs engaged in grassroots or policy advocacy work for social causes, taking advantage of the multicultural makeup of the student body at Princeton University by channeling their multilingual skills toward helping NGOs lacking the resources to get their word out in correct English.
PULP doesn't just comprise one or two socially conscious students helping out a good organization in their spare time. In order to make it sustainable, Yi actually appealed to students' self-interests. By participating in PULP, the student-translators got to practice their language skills in a real-world setting and receive publishing credits in various international publications under their own names. It's a great way to build up your resume when looking for a job in the international-related sector after graduation. And let's face it: What sector today is not international-related?
As for the participating NGOs, they get free, high-quality translations that can gain them wider audiences and crucial support. Yi has created an inclusive and collaborative system of translation workshops, peer editing, and professor oversight in order to guarantee a consistent level of high quality translations. And PULP doesn't just offer translations into English, but in other language pair combinations. Which could be just as important because many of these NGOs work in politically repressed countries where crucial information is only available in English and needs to be reverse-translated into the local language to be accessible on the ground level, where it will have the best opportunity to effect change.
Unlike so many other student-run organizations, PULP did not close up shop with the graduation of its founder. It's still going strong at Princeton University. It has now, in fact, become a proven business model of social entrepreneurship, going nationwide next fall at 25 other campuses. For more information, please visit https://webscript.princeton.edu/~pulp/
Jason Lim is an editor-at-large for Harvard Korean Policy Review, published by Harvard Kennedy School. He can be reached at jasonlim2000@gmail.com.