I need to have a two-word phrase translated into Korean characters.

January 26, 2006 8:22 AM

I need to have a two-word phrase translated into Korean characters.

The phrase is "African Princess" and I know zero about Korean. How can I have this done?

posted by robbie01 to society & culture (12 comments total)

Babel Fish Translation

한국어:
아프리카 공주
posted by kcm at 8:25 AM on January 26, 2006

The "한국어:" in that Babelfish output says "in Korean:". The "아프리카 공주" is the translation.
posted by mendel at 8:35 AM on January 26, 2006

paging stavrosthewonderchicken... stavrosthewonderchicken you have a telephone call in thread 31528.
posted by reverendX at 8:36 AM on January 26, 2006

My two Korean co-workers vouch for the above -
posted by jalexei at 8:38 AM on January 26, 2006

Rough romanization/pronunciation (I don't speak Korean, but I can romanize it, thanks to trying to track down the CD from which that bunny/cat flash animation got its music!) is be apulika kongju.
posted by mendel at 8:46 AM on January 26, 2006

yep, or 아프리칸 공주 will work as well. The translation given by kcm is literally "africa princess"; mine is "african princess", and pretty much anyone (Korean) will understand the genitive characteristic of 'african'...

rough pronunciation is somewhere between:
ah-puh-ri-kan gong-ju
and
aah-peh-li-kahn kong-ju
posted by provolot at 9:09 AM on January 26, 2006

I'd like to clarify that gong-ju should be pronounced with a long o like "to go", but with a softer(?) "g".

(I know nothing of linguistics/pronounciation terminology, so that's best way I can describe the g.)

With that said, I'd like to refine provolot's description to be:
ah-puh-li-kahn gong-joo
posted by like_neon at 9:57 AM on January 26, 2006

Thank everyone. I assume it's proper to write these characters from left-to-right, and not vertically like I've sometimes seen Japanese written?
posted by robbie01 at 11:44 AM on January 26, 2006

Well, I can't add much other than to fine-tune the pronunciation and new standardized romanization for you, maybe.

아프리카 공주

아 ah
프 peu : this is very like the schwa 'uh' sound, but with the tongue pulled back, and pronounced back and low in the mouth. A hard one, because there's not really a direct equivalent in English. The 'p' is aspirated quite strongly.
리 ree (the first character, which is sometimes closer to 'l' and sometimes 'r', depending on syllable position, would sound closer to soft 'r' in the initial position, as here.
카 kah: Strong aspiration on the 'k' sound here.

공 gong: Here, we're looking at a relatively unaspirated sound, between English 'k' and 'g', but closer to 'g'. Voicing is not significant in Korean, but it would be only mildly voiced if at all (seems contradictory, I know). The 'o' is similar to the sound in 'go', but totally undipthongized. Straight 'o'.
주 ju: Sounds effectively like 'jew'. Again, the vowel sound has no dipthongization whatsoever.

Hope that's helpful.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:37 PM on January 26, 2006

Korean is usually read left-to-right, not up-down.

Is this for a tattoo?
posted by Brittanie at 5:03 PM on January 26, 2006

Korean is usually read left-to-right, not up-down.

Small clarification: it was traditionally read vertically (and newspapers from 50 years ago or more were in that style). You still see it vertically, in places like inscriptions on statues and menus and destination signs on buses, sometimes.

It is currently usually read left to right, though, Brittanie is right. Note, however, that the characters within individual syllables are read left-to-right and top-to-bottom, although words, phrases, sentences as a whole are read left to right. A syllable can only have two, three or very occasionally four characters (in the latter case, the last character is silent or pronounced as the initial sound in the following syllable).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:11 PM on January 26, 2006

new standardized romanization

I realize that I didn't actually do that, sorry. New standard romanization of the phrase 아프리카 공주 would look like 'apeurika gongju'.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:52 PM on January 26, 2006