Korean

[Tyrlop]

How do i translate the great quote from the dear leader, to Korean? "Great ideology creates great times." - Kim Jong Il.
thank you.

[Sendo]

How do i translate the great quote from the dear leader, to Korean? "Great ideology creates great times." - Kim Jong Il.
thank you.


A broken translation might be:

주의가 좋아서 생활이 좋아다.
(Juui-ga joaso saenghwal-i joada = "joo ey gah jo ah suh saeng hwah ree jo ah dah")

주체때문에 우리나라가 행복하다.
(Juche-ttaemun-e urinara-ga haengbok-hada = "joo chay damoo nay oo ree nah rah gah haeng bo kah dah")

Because the ideology is good, living conditions are good.

Because of Self-reliance ideology, our nation is happy.

You could go on and on...

I'm sure any Korean would scratch his or her head at these though. The translation sounds very loose, so going backwards is difficult.

I don't know how to create a sentence that sounds like native Korean political rhetoric, let alone socialist-style or Juche-style rhetoric. It's impossible to physically create any kind of "the times"; it's idiomatic.

It's impossible to do recursive translations, though, because translation loses the tone, formality, nuance, puns, etc. and creates new ones in its place and at the discretion of the translator.

Just BTW, Korean and Japanese merely borrow Chinese vocabulary (mostly technical jargon and nouns) the same way English and Albanian borrow from the Romance languages, Farsi (an Indo-European language) borrows from Arabic, Vietnamese also borrows from Chinese. Asking a Chinese to translate English into Korean is like asking you to translate a piece of Swahili into Welsh.

[Tyrlop]

thanks alot comrade. you have made big contribution to my personal goal in creating a Juche friendly t-shirt design. :)

[RedStarOverChina]

Gam-sa ham ni da, Sendo.

:)

[Sendo]

미제 (mije = "mee jay") which is shorthand for "American imperialists" is useful too. (from the chinese-korean Ah-mee-ree-gah which gave 미국 or "mee gook" for American country)

for some humor 미제! 죽을래? Mije! Jueoullae? "Mee jay! Joo gul lay?"

US imperialists! How about you dying?
(loosely: Yankees! I'm going to kill you. something you might hear before two men fight to the death)
Any Korean-speakers would love this for the laughs. Though I think 미제 is a propaganda term rarely heard in the south.

****

맞은 주의는 우리 인생을 행복하게 한다!
Majeun juui-neun uri insaeng-eul haegnbok-hage handa
"Mah jun jooey nun oo ree een saeng eul haeng boe kah gay hon dah"

Correct line makes our lives happy!

There are some differences in N and S Korean, though. S Korean drops word-initial n and r/l before an i or y and turns word-initial r/l to n, and Russian vs English for loanwords, but there are some other features, too. 한겨레 (Hangyoreh or "hon g'yuh ray") means the korean fatherland, but 조국 (joguk or "joe gook") is more common in N Korean propaganda.

****

or how about 김치와 주체는 암을 치료한다 Gimchi-wa juche-neun am-eul chiryohanda "keem chee wah joo chay nun om eul chee r'yoe hon dah" Kimchi and juche cure cancer. Kimchi is eaten all the time in Korea and Koreans are eager to tout its (deserved) health benefits. But only assimilated Koreans would get that since I've combined a cultural reference with the western sarcasm that "X cures cancer".

You're pretty safe with saying juche since any S Koreans who might be offended likely won't understand the word since S Korea bans much material on N Korea, not just web domains and DPRK websites.

[MarxSchmarx]

Asking a Chinese to translate English into Korean is like asking you to translate a piece of Swahili into Welsh.

Actually it's more like asking an English speaker to translate a piece of Swahili into Nahuatl.