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Spelling Mistakes of Proper Nouns in English Information Boards of Gwanghalluwon Area

Choi Hie Sup 1

1전주대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In the summer of 2007, I happened to find some mistakes in the English information boards in Gwanghalluwon Area. I checked eight information boards. As there are so many mistakes, I decided to write papers on them. As this is the first one of them, I focused on the proper nouns in the information boards. The National Institute of the Korean Language proclaimed “The Rule of Romanization of the Korean Language” on the 19th of July, 2000. According to the additional rules, they should have changed the information boards by the end of the year 2005. I don't know whether the information boards were changed or not, but there is no consistency in the spelling of the proper nouns. The place names are not spelled according to any specific rules, for example, the rule of seal characters or the rule of phonetic representation. As “The Rule of Romanization of the Korean Language” advices to use the rule of phonetic representation, the proper nouns should be translated and spelled according to the rule. The mistakes are so diverse that it is almost impossible to classify them into some categories. Some proper nouns have spelling mistakes and unnecessary quotation marks. Some have unnecessary additional spellings or a hyphen, and some show an omission of a necessary spelling, etc. The mistakes in the spelling of proper nouns show the attitude and ability of the persons who are in charge of the information boards. The translators who translated the information from Korean into English seem not to have any sense of historical calling and not to understand the information boards are mute diplomats introducing Korean culture to foreigners.

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