By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
The Ministry of Government Legislation's (MOLEG) project to launch its first ever English-language legal information Web site (oneclick.moleg.go.kr) last December has drawn negative responses from its customers ― foreign residents.
The Web site aims to provide what it calls ``customized, detailed, and easy-to-find and understand'' legal services to those in the nation's three largest foreign residents' groups ― investors, workers and married immigrants ― with no or little understanding of the Korean language.
But many foreigners have complained about its substandard content, including linguistic errors.
``The biggest problem is that it doesn't do what it is supposed to do,'' Art Curtis, an American English teacher, told The Korea times. ``It is supposed to provide simple, easy to understand legal advice for foreigners here. But I find it pretty difficult to understand nearly everything on the site. Its has quite obviously been written by lawyers for lawyers.''
He cited the site's introductory paragraph as a representative example. Its front page says: ``This project builds a new statutory information infrastructure, which regroups complicated statutory relationships and presents them in the context of plausible scenarios, and provides clear interpretations of complicated laws and regulations.''
He said, ``I'm still not quite sure what it means. It feels like you need a law degree to understand this.''
Curtis also complained about its lack of detailed information.
``The site often mentions that if you have a complaint to lodge against an employer, you should contact the labor board that oversees the employer. But it never gives any contact information, or even the names of these bodies,'' he said, adding ``most importantly, they need to ensure that whoever we are told to contact speaks fluent English.''
Another foreigner said a wide range of contents available seem to be Korean-language statutory laws directly translated into English without adding further explanations. ``The site provides only brief and hard to find explanations,'' said Joseph Harte, a professor of law at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. ``Its goal of `regrouping complicated statutory relationships and presenting them in the context of plausible scenarios' doesn't seem to appear.''
Reviewing overall content, Harte said he had found numerous grammar, usage, punctuation, spelling and even typographical errors. ``Unfortunately, this suggests either carelessness or arrogance,'' he said. ``It also leads users to question not only the site's usefulness to its intended audience, but also, unfortunately, its reliability as well.''
A foreigner who refused to be identified said the division of information into three categories was also problematic.
``The site is organized by user classification. In so doing, it's distinguishing among people instead of distinguishing among information. But these categories overlap,'' he said. ``One person could fit into all three categories. And there are foreigners who do not fit any of them. Due to these potential problems, it should be based on categories of information not people.''
Experts said insufficient time given to translators seems to be a major cause for creating such problems, adding this is not an isolated case among similar projects initiated by the government.
According to the ministry, the service includes a wide range of information, the volume of which is tantamount to some 600 A4 pages. It spent nearly 60 million won ($40,000) to hire three veteran Korean-English translators full time between October and November last year for the project.
``They spent the entire time translating the original contents we made in Korean, which is also available online (oneclick.moleg.go.kr), into English,'' said Ahn Byeong-jun, a MOLEG official in charge of the English-language service. ``They graduated from a renowned translation-specialized graduate school here and have years of relevant experience. A native English speaker proofread their output as the final step.''
The Korea Times tried to contact the translators regarding the complaints but they didn't answer.
A veteran translator, who refused to be named, said translating 600 pages of Korean documents into English within two months is an excessive workload, even if the three were highly experienced. ``At least six months should have been given to produce meticulous output,'' he said. ``But this insufficient time for translation is frequently witnessed in government-initiated projects.''
Another MOLEG official admitted insufficient time to translate. ``We know what their complaint is. But every project should be completed with a limited budget, meaning it's impossible for us to give translators as much time as they want,'' she said. ``We will diversify and upgrade the site on a regular basis for a better service.''