As first conference interpreter

By Kim Ji-myung

"You have to learn English to learn Western without going through Japan." This was the advice Kim Ok-gyun gave Yoon Chi-ho in 1881 when they met in Tokyo.

Yun Chi-ho (1864-1945) and Kim Ok-gyun (1851-1894) were among the key intellectual figures when Koreans began to open their eyes to the outside world.

Around the end of the Joseon Kingdom and during the ensuing Korean Empire (1897-1910), before Japan annexed Korea, most Koreans seemed to know that foreign language ability was one good key to attaining higher status. In this enlightening period, Japanese and Western "advisers" arrived to take key posts in the Korean government.

Yoon Chi-ho learned English from a Dutch diplomat for five months. His rudimentary English knowledge, learned from a non-native tutor, was the best in Korea at the time. Therefore, he was employed as a translator for incoming first minister Lucius Foote of the American legation.

When we read history, we need to be wary of terms like "the first," "the best," "the biggest," etc. until we establish the fact by credible evidence. However, it is plausible that Yoon was "the first translator between English and Korean" and he worked at the royal court for King Gojong.

Later, Yoon studied at Vanderbilt and Emory University in the United States and perfected his English. He is known for keeping a diary for 60 years, in which he wrote in English for 40 years. These volumes contain not only his personal actions and ideas but who did what at the critical stage of Korean history.

Being called "the first officially trained simultaneous interpreter" and the "godmother for interpreters" in the Republic of Korea, I have a kind of psychological burden or an urge that I should leave records on what only I can testify to more accurately than others, before it is too late. Keeping the records straight as to the recent history of English interpretation in Korea is at least on my "wish list" or "homework list."

Scholars search records and materials to write papers on topics in the history of any field. But when I look back on my experience on historical scenes and moments, official records or documents alone would never be enough to convey the situation of that moment. Documenting first-hand records is an essential part for an objective understanding of history.

Anyone who had a chance to experience personally an extraordinary historic period should write down what had happened first-hand. Based on these records, historians or students will be able to analyze, narrate or curate stories, discovering the significance later.

Two recent news items provoked me to look back on my days as an interpreter out of my many career paths of journalist, interpreter, conference organizer and digital history scholar.

First is the recent argument that the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) has outlived its expiry date. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the private sector in general desperately needed business information and management knowhow, organizations like the FKI played a conducive role, organizing major educational events.

In retrospect, it was a time of internationalization (not globalization) of the Korean economy, and a time of a fledgling conference interpretation service in Korea.

In 1982, the first batch of graduates from the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies began professional language service. The master's course began in September 1979.

Even before the school opened, there were a few pioneering interpreters such as a journalist of a news agency and American Embassy staff. Although without official training, they did excellent jobs to cover lectures by pro-Korean scholar Dr. Robert A. Scalapino and futurist Dr. Herman Kahn, who frequently visited Korea.

The second bit of news is that the job of translator or interpreter is one of the 10 jobs likely to become extinct in less than 20 years. Already many free software packages are available that offer instant translation in many languages if you scan the words on a mobile phone.

The first line of this column "You have to learn English in order to learn Western without going through Japan" is a Google Translator translation from the Korean that I typed in. It is amazing and getting better every day. Even a junior simultaneous interpreter once told me that Google often outwitted her on colloquial sentences.

The Economist, citing consulting firm Common Sense Advisory, said Google and other leading technology firms would continue to attempt to perfect their language service tools. One day soon, the need for interpreters could disappear.

But translation is one of the oldest vocations in human history. No machine or program can do the job of delivering the message from one language to another without compromising too much content and connotation, at least now.

Do you know who the first Korean president to listen to other presidents' statements in Korean through headphones was?

And do you know what Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee wanted when he had his presidents listening to American advisers for Sony, for their management lecture when he initiated the "re-foundation of Samsung" as its newly inaugurated chairman?

I have answers to these questions and many more stories to record in the "book of history." The profession of an interpreter requires multiple competences, which a software program will never be able to emulate.

The writer is the chairwoman of the Korea Heritage Education Institute (K*Heritage). Her email address is Heritagekorea21@gmail.com.