Korean Translation Services

Translation into Korean

Korean is the language of approximately 45 million people in the Republic of Korea (South Korea), one of Asia’s economic tigers. There are another 25 million users of the Korean language in North Korea. Moreover, there are thousands of Korean speakers in the United States and elsewhere across the globe.

Korean Hangul Script

Although most Koreans have studied English in school, Korean is used for most business and cultural activities. Therefore, translation is a requirement for any organization wanting to make inroads in Korea.

Modern Korean uses the Hangul script, which was invented in 1445 by King Sejong to replace the Chinese characters that scholars had used until then. Having just 10 vowels and 14 consonants, Hangul is so easy to learn that detractors referred to it as “Achimgeul” (morning letters), angered that common folk could master it in a single morning.

Despite the ease of use, it was not until the 1950s that Hangul replaced Chinese characters as the primary script in published works. Though it is near China and Japan, the Korean language has few similarities with Chinese and Japanese.

Korean is a member of the Altaic family of languages, which includes Manchu and Mongolian. There is, however, a significant trait the three languages have in common – as with Chinese and Japanese, translating Korean to and from English is a singular challenge. When compared with the European languages, all three of these Asian tongues pose greater difficulties linguistically and culturally, and accurate Korean translation is a challenge even for those who have been bilingual for their entire lives.

Translation rates for Korean translations

Our rates range from EUR 0.13 (US $0.17) to EUR 0.17 (US $0.23) per source word, according to the following factors:

Specificity of the text – if a translator has to perform a lot of research, the translation logically takes more time.
Total word count.
Requested deadline – if we have to work overnight or during weekends, there is a 50% increase over the basic rate.
The format of the document – the best-fit format for translation purposes is a word processing format (for instance, MS Word-compliant) or html.

As is evident, a number of factors influence the price of a translation. This is the reason we ask you to send us all files that require translation as soon as possible, so that we can provide you with an exact quote, based on all the factors mentioned above.

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