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

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

robbie01 — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:22:27 -0800

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?

By: kcm

kcm — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:25:11 -0800

Babel Fish Translation

한국어:
아프리카 공주

By: mendel

mendel — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:35:48 -0800

The "한국어:" in that Babelfish output says "in Korean:". The "아프리카 공주" is the translation.

By: reverendX

reverendX — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:36:55 -0800

paging stavrosthewonderchicken... stavrosthewonderchicken you have a telephone call in thread 31528.

By: jalexei

jalexei — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:38:44 -0800

My two Korean co-workers vouch for the above -

By: mendel

mendel — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 08:46:45 -0800

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.

By: provolot

provolot — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:09:59 -0800

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

By: like_neon

like_neon — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:57:47 -0800

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

By: robbie01

robbie01 — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 11:44:00 -0800

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?

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:37:31 -0800

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.

By: Brittanie

Brittanie — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:03:06 -0800

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

Is this for a tattoo?

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:11:31 -0800

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).

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:52:33 -0800

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'.