Day 88: Lost In Translation?

This week I'm helping Steven with a project at work. Our elementary students are competing in an English-speaking Contest in August which is an annual big event in our province. To help the kids prepare, Steven is going to record sections of our textbook and vocabulary onto tape so that each kid will have a copy that they can listen to at home. And who's voice will the kids be practicing their pronounciation to? Mine! It's been a bit of a strange project, but kinda fun too. I go in every morning into the playroom which has been turned into a mini pseudo recording studio. I sit at this chair in front of a mic and clearly, with my best dictation voice, record chunks of the text book.

It feels a little strange to do it, because I have to record like half hour chunks all in one single sequence at a consistent pace - no coughing, no yawning, no errors allowed. I hate hearing how I sound on the tape, but doesn't everyone hate the sound of thier recorded voice? There was a few times during recording that I had to concentrate to keep myself from laughing, as some of the sentences are kinda funny. Here's a few of my favourites that almost made me giggle:

"Let's go to the playground and play. Do you want to play with sand? Don't throw sand!" (oh, playground drama...)

"I knew you could do it! Where have you been hiding all these talents?" (who would actually say something like this?)

"Shame on you. That wasn't good! Go to your room. You need some spanking!" (my personal favourite - it was hard to record this one in a normal voice cause I wanted to crack up!)

"Put on your pants. Do you want me to button your shirt? Change your underpanties!" (this to me just sounds really dirty...I had to try real hard NOT to giggle during this one!)

I've adjusted my blog again... Unknowingly I had set the comments feature so that only blog-writers could leave a comment. I've since changed it so that now absolutely anyone can write a comment. Sorry if there was any confusion! Feel free to comment away to your heart's content now! :-)

After work tonight I went over to Ailish's (the Irish girl I met last Friday who lives just up the street from me) to hang out and watch some TV. It's so great to have a friend who lives so near to me. Monday and Tuesday nights is GREAT television here - 1 episode of The OC and 3 episodes of Sex & The City, all back-to-back. Wonderful! All Western programming aired in Korea comes with Korean subtitles so that the Koreans can follow along too, and I've gotten so used to seeing subtitles on TV that I don't even notice them anymore.

However, while watching Sex & The City tonight, it got me thinking, do they translate everything *literally*? S&TC is a pretty 'racy' show, especially by Korean standards which are MUCH MORE conservative than North American shows. The Koreans are quite naive and sheltered when it comes to sex and sexuality in mass media, so watching a show like S&TC must either shock the hell out of them, or send them into a titillating frenzy! Do all the little slang expressions and sexual innuendoes and dirty talk on S&TC really translate over into Korean? Are there Korean equivalents to words like 'hummer', 'fling', 'one night stand', 'going down on me', and 'fuck buddy?' Cause in just 3 episodes of S&TC all of those expressions came up at least once, among many others that most Koreans could consider either horrifying, scandalous, offensive, or just plain inappropriate for public television. Yet the show is still aired... I can only imagine how red the faces of the translators must be when they have to write up the subtitles to put them on screen with each episode of that show! Who knew that Sarah Jessica Parker and company would unknowingly become 'sexual educators' in Korea? haha! :-)