Our company shall FTW~!!

..Been translating like a machine for the past couple days.Without any exaggeration, more than 20 hours logged, beginning Friday AM.

Having been short on income, and finding it increasingly difficult to maintain my bourgeouise lifestyle, it was most fortunate I was tasked with a well paying translation job. I was given 14 separate company profiles to translate into English from Korean, all of which were manufacturing companies in the Seongdong area of Seoul.

There were some difficult phrases/ expressions/ sentences, some more interesting than others. Thought I'd share some here.


1) Excerpt from a profile on a concrete-structure repair/reinforcement company, after stating how it is a frontrunner in the business, unafraid to try new things:

"...그러나 현재의 자리에 안주하거나 만족하지 않고 우리를 위태롭게 하는 그 어떠한 외부 환경의 변화와 도전에도 혁신과 개혁 벤처정신으로 세계를 정복할 때까지 끊임없이 노력할 것입니다."

this one took me a good 25 minutes to get through. LOL '세계 정복"!!!! ARE YOU SERIOUS?? hahahah i mean, it's nice to be all trailblazin' and stuff, but do you really want to be like the antichrist? I think they meant it under good intentions.. I think. not too sure actually. anywho, after a couple dozen brain cramps and a cup of americano, the result was:

Nonetheless, we remain true to our spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship and we refuse to settle for status quo, and will never stop venturing.

 

2) This was a hard one. It was about steel balls (ie ball bearings, mills, etc), and how the company produces a wide variety of them, some ferrous and others just crazy alloys.

여의주.. "신주" 와 어감이 비슷...NO?

"비자성체로 내식성이 매우 우수하며, 플라스틱 Ball, 신주 Ball, 인청동 Ball, 알루미늄 Ball, 세라믹 Ball 등이 제작되고 있습니다"

신민아!! take my 신주! i don't know how many I have, but I give it all to you!

Easy, right? 플라스틱, 인처동, 알류미늄, 세라믹. common names... NOPE. 신주? i thought we were talking about Dragon Ball Z or maybe something about traditional Korean virgin ghost ladies (처녀귀신/구미호 etc) I mean, there was that 정기 ball thing right? but now way.. you can't make ball bearings out of that. I literally had a brain cramp on this one, and gave up.  Result was this: 

We manufacture plastic balls, 신주 balls, phosphorous bronze balls, aluminum balls, and ceramic balls for use in computer components and other industrial prime movers and valves.

Try searching "신주 철구" 신주 is the mystery word, and 철구 means steel ball/bearing. I rummaged through at LEAST a dozen variations of related topics/words, and came out empty handed. completely stumped me. i forget what the specific query was, but I actually at one point had a googlewhack combination.