Tips on Korean and Vietnamese

KOREAN
Korean translation is provided for documents, technical papers, human resources and marketing. There are 3 main dialects of Korean: South Korean, North Korean and expatiate Korean for persons living in the United States or other English-speaking countries. Between the South and North Korean dialects there is a variation in word usage, but most obviously a significant difference in spoken accent. Because of the political climate between the two areas, it is recommend that the utmost care be given to identify the exact Korean target market, and use only translators and voice talents from the proper region.

Koreans living in English-speaking countries pepper their speech with anglicized words, particularly for financial applications such as banking, training or human resource materials. Expatiate Korean will be a bit more simplified and have many daily support-words in English.

Unlike Chinese or Japanese, Korean characters are becoming quite computer-friendly as computer operating systems around the world prepare for localization. Korean characters are actually an alphabet, and can therefore be read if the alphabet is known by the reader. @International Services, for example,  assists clients to become Korean-compatible, or delivers documents and translations as PDF files that can be read on any computer or used by any professional printing company without Korean fonts or capability.

VIETNAMESE
Vietnamese translation is provided for documents, technical papers, human resources and marketing. There are 4 main dialects of Vietnamese: South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, a “Central Vietnamese” (based upon centuries-old Chinese), and expatiate Vietnamese for persons living in the United States or other English-speaking countries. Between the South and North Vietnamese dialects there is a variation in word usage, and significant difference in spoken accent. Because of the political climate between the two areas, it is recommend that the utmost care be given to identify the exact Vietnamese target market, and use only translators and voice talents from the proper region.

Vietnamese living in English-speaking countries pepper their speech with anglicized words, particularly for financial applications such as banking, training or human resource materials. Expatiate Vietnamese for the U.S. will be a bit more simplified and have many daily support-words in English. Vietnamese voices for videos, training and U.S. voice applications often have a light American accent, rather than the pure “mother country” sound. This light American accent is accepted by all expatriate Vietnamese speakers in the U.S. Heavily English-accented Vietnamese is not as classy for multimedia.

Although based upon A-B-C alphabet, Vietnamese text has totally different accent marks for letters from all other major world languages. There can be several special accent marks for one single letter. The hidden computer code for Vietnamese characters often causes difficulties in web work by designers with incompatible software. @International Services, as another example, assists clients to become Vietnamese-compatible, or delivers documents and translations as PDF files that can be read on any computer or used by any professional printing company without Vietnamese fonts and settings.

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