Today I came across the expression 智者不失時 (지자불실시), which can literally translate as follows:
"A wise man (智者) does not (不) lose (失) time (時)."The Korean definition of 失時 (실시) is "때를 놓침," where 때 can mean either "시기(時機) or 기회(機會), both of which can translate as opportunity or chance. Therefore, a better translation of the above expression is probably the following:
"A wise man (智者) does not (不) miss (失) an opportunity (時)."Notice that 시기 (時機) and 기회 (機會) both include the Chinese character 기 (機), which means machine but can also mean chance or opportunity. If someone knew 機 (기) only to mean machine, then he or she might mistranslate 시기 (時機) as time (時) machine (機).
Koreans translate H. G. Wells' 1895 novella The Time Machine as "타임머신," which is just a bland transliteration of the English title. I wonder why Koreans did not take the time to come up with their own, more interesting descriptive word or phrase for The Time Machine.
In Chinese a time machine is called 時光機器, not sure about Korean though. Interestingly Japanese uses 時光機, that can be the case for Korean 시광기.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Though 時光 (시광) seems to mean "time" in Chinese, there is not such word in Korean, as far as I know. In Korean, 時光 (시광) would be translated separately as "time" (時) and "light" (光).
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