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The banner behind the soldiers says, "Thorough fulfillment of the high commander's orders..."
Guy on the left reads, "Following the high-minded example of our Youthful Leader (Kim Jong Un) let's sacrifice our youth!"
First sitting soldier thinks, "Heh, whatever, YOU go ahead and sacrifice your youth..."
Second sitting soldier thinks, "I'm hungry, I want to eat."
And fetal position dude thinks, "Training again this time. He's dead, I see."
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Actually, I can't really figure out what the last guy is trying to say, and even though I think I've got the translation down fairly well, none of this seems like a very potent criticism of Kim Jong Un. Any help, Korean speakers?
1 comments:
I hope you're not looking at me for help! I can hardly even make out the hangeul.
I admit that you are much better versed and more experienced in reading Korean stuff than me, but I'm still uncomfortable with statements like "Paragraph-long sentences, circular logic, and strings of nouns are commonplace." Just a few nights ago, a friend was helping me edit a restaurant review that I had written first in English and then translated into Korean. One of the biggest issues was that she said my adjective-strings (e.g. healthy, local, and organic food) came across as weird in Korean, and another was that my sentences were too long.
I mean, have you ever received an email from a Korean with a sentence longer than this one?
Or with more than one sentence per paragraph?
Or without of these letters-turned-punctuation-marks: ㅋㅋㅋkkㅎㅎzz?
That is not to say that there are not instances where Korean is extremely hard to make sense of or translate successfully. I suppose I am just committed to a certain amount of linguistic relativism and statements that seem to cast any language in a slightly pejorative light get me all defensive. Whaddya think?
I do agree that the fetal position guy is quite confusing. Who or what is the subject of "died / is dead"? Some soldier we can't see? The training process (the only other noun in the sentence)? The speaker himself? Ask your prof and report back!
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