By Kim Ji-myung
Reading my column of Aug. 29, 2015, I find my article was a quite undiplomatic and blunt criticism of the unthinkable and unpardonable mistakes made in "The Korean Mind," published in 2012 by Tuttle Publishing.
At that time, I asked my readers to help me locate and contact the author, Boye Lafayette de Mente, who also authored more than 30 books on Asia, such as "Korean Business Etiquette," "Survival Korean" and "Etiquette Guide to China."
"The Korean Mind," subtitled "Understanding Contemporary Korean Culture," is a 466-page dictionary with has some 230 entries of very Korean concepts and words, both in English and in Korean, relating to 11 themes of diverse contemporary world.
I won't repeat the terrible errors in detail again. Most of the translated English words seemed to well represent the core concept and culturally loaded meaning of the words. But the hangeul part was sheer nonsense, and no Korean language at all.
Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of Korean script will know immediately that something went gravely wrong in the publication process.
My guess was, for whatever the reason, the author, and the editor of Tuttle failed to have the Korean entries written or at least checked by someone who speaks Korean.
A reader responded saying "I wanted to agree with you about the Hangeul misspellings ― unforgivable and disappointing. (…) I would hope with the author's amazing depth of knowledge of Korean people's psyche he would have spent time studying the Korean language as well, so I too have to assume this was the fault of the publisher."
As I could not contact the author, I wrote to the Tuttle office, explaining the mistakes and requested to check and correct these errors in their next version. A staff member promised to send me a corrected version when it is published later.
The Seoul International Book Fair held at COEX last week was a big success if we judge it by the number of visitors. I was among the 200,000 visitors.
A copy of the revised version of "The Korean Mind," in a different cover design and color, was randomly placed atop many English books on Asia at a booth. As I haven't received any information about this new version from Tuttle, it was a surprising and pleasant encounter.
Below the author's name Boye Lafayette de Mente, there was "Revised by Laura Kingdon." Thanks to Kingdon, the misspellings of hangeul are all gone. And many outdated words which are no longer used in today's society were deleted.
Through my search of Kingdon, I learned she is a talented translator living in Korea, working from French and Korean into English. Another thing I read is that she is an author listed on the Goodreads, which is "the world's largest site for readers and book recommendations."
The Goodreads site claims their recommendation engine analyzes 20 billion data points and provides suggestions so that people can find out if a book is a good fit for you from our community's reviews. It must be a community site for book authors, reviewers, readers, and lovers.
If Goodreads' authors contribute their professional talents to help readers and publishers, it could have an enormous potential as a crowd-sourced pro bono intellectual screening mechanism. I am not quite sure if the revision was done pro bono by Ms. Kingdon but she did a good job re-arranging the entries. The book was reduced from 466 pages to 374 condensed but well-structured pages.
As an independent historian and researcher, I am very keen on maligning or slanted narratives on Korea, by intention or by negligence. I hope Mr. Boye Lafayette de Mente will regard my initiatives as good-willed efforts to get things rectified, which in the end will make the world better.
Sometimes I envy the poised and detached attitude of the Brits towards their own history ― events, figures and documents. I must admit that I am usually under the pressure of self-imposed mission of "portraying Korea as it is" and "rectifying the distorted and inaccurate information" about this geopolitically ill-destined country to the wide world community.
The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.
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At that time, I asked my readers to help me locate and contact the author, Boye Lafayette de Mente, who also authored more than 30 books on Asia, such as "Korean Business Etiquette," "Survival Korean" and "Etiquette Guide to China."
"The Korean Mind," subtitled "Understanding Contemporary Korean Culture," is a 466-page dictionary with has some 230 entries of very Korean concepts and words, both in English and in Korean, relating to 11 themes of diverse contemporary world.
I won't repeat the terrible errors in detail again. Most of the translated English words seemed to well represent the core concept and culturally loaded meaning of the words. But the hangeul part was sheer nonsense, and no Korean language at all.
Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of Korean script will know immediately that something went gravely wrong in the publication process.
My guess was, for whatever the reason, the author, and the editor of Tuttle failed to have the Korean entries written or at least checked by someone who speaks Korean.
A reader responded saying "I wanted to agree with you about the Hangeul misspellings ― unforgivable and disappointing. (…) I would hope with the author's amazing depth of knowledge of Korean people's psyche he would have spent time studying the Korean language as well, so I too have to assume this was the fault of the publisher."
As I could not contact the author, I wrote to the Tuttle office, explaining the mistakes and requested to check and correct these errors in their next version. A staff member promised to send me a corrected version when it is published later.
The Seoul International Book Fair held at COEX last week was a big success if we judge it by the number of visitors. I was among the 200,000 visitors.
A copy of the revised version of "The Korean Mind," in a different cover design and color, was randomly placed atop many English books on Asia at a booth. As I haven't received any information about this new version from Tuttle, it was a surprising and pleasant encounter.
Below the author's name Boye Lafayette de Mente, there was "Revised by Laura Kingdon." Thanks to Kingdon, the misspellings of hangeul are all gone. And many outdated words which are no longer used in today's society were deleted.
Through my search of Kingdon, I learned she is a talented translator living in Korea, working from French and Korean into English. Another thing I read is that she is an author listed on the Goodreads, which is "the world's largest site for readers and book recommendations."
The Goodreads site claims their recommendation engine analyzes 20 billion data points and provides suggestions so that people can find out if a book is a good fit for you from our community's reviews. It must be a community site for book authors, reviewers, readers, and lovers.
If Goodreads' authors contribute their professional talents to help readers and publishers, it could have an enormous potential as a crowd-sourced pro bono intellectual screening mechanism. I am not quite sure if the revision was done pro bono by Ms. Kingdon but she did a good job re-arranging the entries. The book was reduced from 466 pages to 374 condensed but well-structured pages.
As an independent historian and researcher, I am very keen on maligning or slanted narratives on Korea, by intention or by negligence. I hope Mr. Boye Lafayette de Mente will regard my initiatives as good-willed efforts to get things rectified, which in the end will make the world better.
Sometimes I envy the poised and detached attitude of the Brits towards their own history ― events, figures and documents. I must admit that I am usually under the pressure of self-imposed mission of "portraying Korea as it is" and "rectifying the distorted and inaccurate information" about this geopolitically ill-destined country to the wide world community.
The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.
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