Now, Koreangov has started a blog as well, where you can enjoy his style of satire, stretched out into longer passages. I particularly enjoyed the "new driving test" post. The blog has had a good start so far, and has the advantage of an already-built-in audience.
Moreover, my hat is off to Koreangov's amazing skill at writing English as if it were a Korean trying to write English. We've exchanged a few e-mails, and I can assure you it's a ruse, and s/he writes English perfectly fluently, but s/he is just hilarious.
It reminds me of this book I once randomly picked up:
It's a hilariously ridiculous book that obviously never passed through the hands of a single native speaker on its torturous journey from being written, obviously, in Korean first, and then translated into English with the help of a Korean-English dictionary and a grammar class. But only one or two grammar classes.
Go ahead and read it: it's right exactly on the line between clumsy, hilarious, frustrating, and sad.
Here are some examples of the train-wrecky text:
So why am I writing about this?
Because old favorite comedy blog Dokdo Is Ours just rolled out a really funny idea: The Great Gatsby Project, where contributors can take a page out of the NORMAL book "The Great Gatsby" and translate it into "This was obviously written first in Korean, and then translated into English, and never edited or read by a Native speaker at any point in the process" It's called Deo Geureat Kechupi Ploject.
I think this is a great idea which might have hilarious results, and I might contribute a few pages for fun. If any of you have regular proofreading, editing, or writing marking duties, this might be a fun way to blow off some of that frustration. So go check out the project proposal, and the new blog DIO started for the project, and maybe claim a page or two for your own.
5 comments:
Thanks for the heads-up on new K. gov. blog! Haven't had such a good laugh since K.T. copulated the Honeymoon car to the back of the train to Taech'on Beach way back when! Talk about Land of Magnificent Nonsense -
The korean Govenrment shall partake!
How the heck did you get that book?
And how the heck did you make it all the way to page 60?
That book is hilarious. Thanks for posting an excerpt.
It's horrendous English, but there's a kind of realism there. You can just picture an ajosshi in your head saying those words out aloud in only a way an ajosshi can.
Funny stuff, indeed. Koreangov has that rare gift: a blog gimmick that makes everyone want to get into the act.
Still, seeing as how most educated Koreans' English is better than my Korean is ever going to be, I can't laugh too hard. I received as a wedding gift a book written by a Korean professor, about his sojourn in the American midwest. He decided to write it himself, in English, which upon reflection was pretty brave.
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