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| Korean dishes on menus from various restaurants have been wrongly translated. / Courtesy of Saenuri Party Rep. Yeom Dong-yeol |
By Kim Da-hee
What do you think of a country where you can find "roast grandmother" or "spicy and weird soup" on a restaurant menu? These eyebrow-raising dishes are what Chinese tourists to Korea are finding on some menus.
Although the Korean government has tried to tackle the mistranslation of Korean food, one in three Korean restaurants with Chinese-translated menus in major Seoul tourist areas has seriously mistranslated dishes, a lawmaker said Thursday.
According to Saenuri Party Rep. Yeom Dong-yeol, who received data from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, 60 of the 185 restaurants with Chinese-translated menus had the problem. The data was from a report that Soon Chun Hyang University supplied to the Korea Tourism Organization.
The university examined 274 restaurants in major tourist areas, including five special tourist zones, and popular tourist destinations, including Bukchon Hanok Village and Hongik University, from October 20 to December 8 last year. Among the restaurants, 185 had Chinese-translated menus.
According to the report, the Korean food "pork with aged kimchi (mugeun-ji-jjim)" was translated as "roast grandmother" in a restaurant near Ewha University and Hongik University. The Korean dish "kimchi stew (kimchi jjigae)" was translated as "spicy and weird soup."
Classified by areas, the Itaewon and Jamsil special tourist zones have the most mistranslated menu items, 43 percent. Bukchon and Sechon Hanok Village have the fewest with 19 percent. Thirty-two percent of small restaurants have mistranslated menu items while 25 percent of large restaurants have them.
The university found that restaurants that asked an advertising company to translate their menus had more mistakes (35.5 percent) than those were the owners did the translation (23.1 percent).
Yeom said although the National Institute of Korean Language, the Korea Tourism Organization and the Korean Food Foundation provided guidelines for foreign names of Korean food, restaurant owners seldom use them.
"To increase the cultural value of Korean foods, there should be more efforts to provide correct foreign names of the foods," Yeom said.
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