Replies to This Discussion | 이 토론에 대한 답글들

Permalink Reply by Tyler Joyner on August 14, 2010 at 4:24am

Personally I've always wanted a resource for those hard-to-find vocab words, especially business-related ones. This is, after all, a business-oriented site. As you mentioned, there's a thousand ways and resources for learning basic Korean, but it's much harder to find good resources for, say, common stock related terms or words you might come across while applying for a home loan.

Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on August 19, 2010 at 12:43pm

That's a great suggestion Tyler. We've got some excellent Korean speakers in this group and one way to leverage this would be as a place to discuss the nuances of special Korean business terminology that goes beyond ordinary dictionary definitions.

This isn't regarding a business-related term but it is an good (and extreme!) example of the kind of discussion that would be possible here and which could also be fascinating:

A Very Helpful Explanation about Korean Grammar from Linguist Yongj...
I Received More Help with Understanding the Grammatical Nuances of ...
Yet More Help with 그것이 알고 싶다

Here's another discussion from my weblog that could serve as a model for Korean-language business discussions in this group:

Searching for the Meaning of 체하다 in Korean

Can others share some more ideas for us here?

Permalink Reply by Philipp Grunwald on June 24, 2011 at 1:33pm

I think this is really weird. Quite frankly, I unfairly guess this is a specifically Korean issue, even though they do so much of their own publishing. What I mean by this is, I know there are for example - at least - enough publications around in the German market to cover that very issue for us German speakers. I don't consider the German academic, publishing or business sector "superior", but indeed we got some handy publications available: There are the great publications of Cometis, then there is the "zahn Englisch - Deutsches Business Glossary" and the "zahn Wörterbuch für das Bank- und Börsenwesen" and sure there are more I don't want to list now.

But maybe it is just an issue of language barrier and information asymetry (i.e. lack of knowledge about the publications on the Korean market), as the former examples are also generally published in German?

 

Yet, as I'm not currently residing in Korea my point would be: Is there no one here working in Yeouido or has friends working there? Who is working in the publishing industry and can obtain a catalogue offline or online and find the time to leaf through it? And shouldn't there be a lot of you here who have enough Korean language skills to ask around in the major bookstores in Seoul? ;-) And in the end there is good old Google and naver. Plus again, how about your Korean work colleagues, isn't there anyone that has ever searched for and/or bought a "Korean to business English" dictionary, which is indeed what we are looking for here? I'm sure there is stuff out there on the market.

 

And shouldn't your translation company, Mr. Bammel, basically know many of the available publications? ;-) I mean if you do such specialized translations, don't you use very "sophisticated" dictionaries or software? How about asking around in the professional / business translators community? Sure Mr. Bammel isn't the only translator and consultant in the whole of Korea. ;-)

 

Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on June 25, 2011 at 10:17am

Phillipp - 

 

My goal with this group is to find a niche for learning Korean that is not being covered elsewhere. By trying to link to the best of what others are doing, I'm hoping we'll find some empty spots. Sure, it's easy to go to Kyobo and look through the list of books; that's not the main point though of this discussion though. So far, we have not found our "sweet spot" here (in spite of Chris' fantastic effort with the Business Korean Review last year:  http://www.koreabusinesscentral.com/page/business-korean-review-1.)

 

As for my translation work, I use one resource and one resource only: Google! Google Dictionary and the Google search function. In fact, here's a link to long overview of the Google Terminology Search Approach which I often use - http://www.translate-korean.com/home-1/Home/resources-2/google-term.... I've got a bunch of dictionaries back home in the US collecting dust in the garage; the paper dictionary is surely an outdated concept now.

Permalink Reply by Jonathan McClelland on August 19, 2010 at 1:19pm

I think the language learning group would benefit from lists. For example, lists of common business terms would be helpful, like Tyler suggested. Lists of good textbooks/learning tools and Korean classes would be nice, as well. From these lists, perhaps discussion about which language-learning tools are most effective could be created, which, in turn, would facilitate our language learning, or at least help us learn a little bit more.

Permalink Reply by Steven S. Bammel on August 19, 2010 at 4:40pm

Thanks, Jonathan.. Yes, that would be a great resource.

Note that we do have a relatively undeveloped version of such a page here: http://www.koreabusinesscentral.com/page/topic-central-learn-korean

There's a section at the bottom for adding comments. My idea is for members to keep adding suggested content and then periodically we'll go back and update the page to reflect those. With time, those incremental improvements could lead to a fabulous central resource for exactly the kinds of lists which you've mentioned.

Keep the suggestions coming!