Time and place for Konglish
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By Andrew Salmon
Near my office stands a sandwich shop. It is convenient, its prices are reasonable and its offerings healthy. I go a couple of times a week and am greeted as a regular by the friendly staff.
Being close to Insadong and Anguk, it attracts many foreign tourists. Yet the staff - a young, cheerful bunch – is unwilling to speak even a few words of English to these customers. This is odd. The vocabulary required to serve a sandwich is not complicated, and all staffers have had over 10 years of English education in Korea’s school system.
I suspect the issue is not lack of English, but fear of making mistakes and “losing face.” This attitude is a death knell for language acquisition. According to professional linguists (not me), the best students are those who take risks, use the language as often as possible, and make it work as a communication tool. Fluency and perfection follow in due course.
For Koreans who fear looking foolish when using imperfect English - “Konglish”- with foreigners, I say: “Don’t.” Foreigners here are in a foreign country and will appreciate your effort. And any native English speakers who snigger at Koreans’ English efforts should consider the following advice: “Don’t laugh at someone who speaks broken English. It means they can speak another language.”
Saying this, I almost soiled myself due to uncontrollable laughter while viewing a couple of promotional films recently made by broadcaster Arirang TV. One showcased Busan; the other Daegu. The films, featuring professionally shot aerial footage of the cities, looked fine. The problem was that the visuals were accompanied by the most ridiculous, most woefully comedic Konglish voiceover I have ever heard. Making things even more hysterical, the station had hired a competent American voice actor to read the scripts ― which he did, deadpan, without making any corrections.
I am not the only one to be tickled. The films caused a minor storm online, and have apparently been pulled ― possibly by someone covering her or his ass. The good news is the films themselves are fine; all that needs to be done is for the scripts to be edited and re-recorded. Still, this is embarrassing. Arirang is Korea’s official, state-run English language broadcaster. It has the mission, the experience, the staff and the budget not to make such crass errors.
“Hang on!” you cry. “Above, you advise Koreans to use English to communicate, regardless of mistakes! Now, you say that when they inevitably make mistakes, you laugh at them! You, sir, are a hypocrite!”
Let me explain. The average Kim, Park or Lee does not need fluent English. Konglish is fine for most situations. The problem is when a well-funded company, agency or organization uses dire English in its global communications.
Many Korean firms and organizations are benchmarks for good English usage. Take the newspaper you are reading now. The Korea Times represents vernacular news and opinions, but is carefully edited by teams of native sub-editors. Likewise, the websites, promotional materials and ads of many Korean conglomerates boast native-standard English. Several government institutions also produce quality English materials.
It is not difficult. Multiple global ad agencies, PR agencies and professional freelance writers established in Seoul offer copywriting and editing services. Compared to other business costs such as legal, accounting and management consulting, these services are reasonably priced.
Why, then, do we still see so many embarrassing English-language materials from so many agencies and companies? According to the IMF in 2015, Korea boasted the world’s 11h largest national GDP. So the answer is not budget: This is a rich country.
I fear the answer is professional mismanagement. If responsible managers are unaware of how ridiculous they make their organization and Korea look when they feed poorly produced or unintentionally hilarious materials into international markets, they should not be in their jobs.
These managers need not be fluent English speakers. They do, however, need to ensure that the English-language content produced by their offices is subject to rigorous quality-control - be it an in-house , empowered English curator or an off-site professional editor or agency.
There are times, places and situations for Konglish: casual conversation and written materials in Korea; online communications by Koreans using English; and situations where Konglish’s quirkiness comes into its own, such as K-pop lyrics and Seoul’s offbeat new slogan “I.Seoul.U.” (Albeit, the jury is still out on that one.)
The place for Konglish is not the global media sphere. Communicating with Konglish in that space runs the risk of subjecting the related company, agency or organization ― and Korea itself ― to ridicule.
Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.