한국어 · Hangul alphabet
Korean Translation
The Hangul alphabet; on official documents the order of names is the reverse of the Turkish one.
Prices are starting per-page rates on economy delivery.
Turkish ↔ Korean translation
Language pair
Turkish into Korean and back again; the unit rates differ according to which way the work runs.
Level of certification
The sworn translator’s seal is included; notarisation and apostille are separate items.
Delivery
Economy, standard and express options.
Document types
Civil status, diploma, contract, medical and commercial documents.
Which countries accept a Korean translation?
The same language is subject to a different certification regime from one country to the next. Choose the country your document is going to:
Demand for Korean translation has grown noticeably more varied in recent years. The classic body of it is supply paperwork from electronics, automotive components and defence; onto that are added student exchanges, work visa files, and the subtitling, publishing and licensing texts that come from the culture sector. What these fields expect of the language differs enormously from one to the next.
Hangul is easy to read; the grammar is what tests you
The Korean alphabet rests on an orderly system and its letters are set into syllable blocks; it is a script that is easy to learn to read. The difficulty lies not in the writing but in how a sentence is put together. In Korean the predicate comes last and nouns show their function through suffixes; so far it resembles Turkish. The parting of ways starts with the levels of speech: the verb takes a separate shape according to the person addressed and the person being spoken about. In a contract or an official letter, the level chosen gives away how the parties regard one another.
The second difficulty is the layer of vocabulary of Chinese origin. Most of the legal and technical vocabulary comes out of that layer and stands apart from its counterpart in everyday Korean. Using the everyday counterpart in an official document makes the text look unofficial.
Frequent mistakes in translation from Turkish into Korean
- Mixing up the number systems. Korean uses two separate sets of numerals and which one goes where depends on the thing being counted; large numbers are also named in steps of ten thousand.
- Disturbing the order of names. The surname comes first in Korean; in Latin-script spelling the order may change, and that creates confusion in institutional records.
- Leaving out the title. Korean business correspondence addresses a person by their title; addressing someone without one counts as rude.
- Building the address on Turkish logic. Korean addresses run from the wider unit down to the narrower; an address built the other way round stops delivery.
Which documents come in
| Document | Context | What we watch |
|---|---|---|
| Supply contract and technical annex | Electronics and automotive components | Completeness of the annex lists |
| Diploma, academic transcript, language certificate | University and scholarship applications | Leaving the grading system unconverted |
| Employment contract and visa papers | Work permit files | Word-for-word transfer of the job description |
| Criminal record certificate and civil registry records | Residence permits, marriage | Name spelling in step with the passport |
| Subtitles, licensing and promotional texts | Culture and publishing sector | Register and the character limit |
Subtitling is a specialism of its own in this language. It is not enough for the text to be right; line length, reading time and the fit between the level of speech and the character are weighed together. We do not treat this work under the same heading as document translation.
In work visa files, the list of documents the Korean side asks for changes with the type of application, and a single missing item holds the whole file up. Some of these documents are accepted in English; having all of them translated into Korean means spending money for nothing. If you pass on the list you have been sent, we can sift out together which documents genuinely need Korean translation.
Transliteration of names and consistency with the passport
More than one system has been used for carrying Korean names into the Latin alphabet, and traces of them are found side by side in passports; the same surname can appear in several different spellings. The right course is not to read the name afresh out of Hangul but to take the spelling in the passport as the basis. When Turkish names are carried into Korean, a single table of sound equivalents is likewise chosen; since the sounds ç, ş and ğ do not exist as such in Korean, approximate equivalents are used, and that choice is not altered anywhere in the file.
Korean records hold a personal identity number, and that number carries date of birth information. We do not reformat the number, nor add spaces or hyphens; it is carried across as it stands. We translate the name of the field but do not present it as the equivalent of the identity number used in Türkiye; the numbers of the two systems do not carry the same information.
Turnaround and sending your file
Korean is a language whose pool in Türkiye is growing but is still limited; standard civil-status and education papers come out within a reasonable time, while technical and cultural work may mean waiting for a specialist translator. When you send the document, let us know the field, the receiving institution and any term list you have. For the fee and the delivery date, upload your document; unit rates are set out in our price list.
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