Korean Phrases You Missed in 'Squid Game'

[Narrator] Korean speakers

watching the Netflix series Squid Game

were quick to point out that the English translations

didn't always match up to the dialogue.

Wired reached out to Korean language professor Joowon Suh,

to see what English speakers might be missing out on.

This part, the translation is definitely sanitized.

Two main differences I noticed in translations

are address terms

[Ali speaks in Korean]

and the swearing expressions.

[Mi-nyeo speaks in Korean]

[Narrator] Today we're gonna be talking

about English subtitles.

Not the dumb version.

Do you know where your son happens to be now?

On business in the United States.

[Narrator] That's a whole nother video.

So let's start with the address terms.

[Mi-nyeo speaks in Korean]

[Deok-su speaks in Korean] [Ali speaks in Korean]

[Gi-hun speaks in Korean] [Mi-nyeo speaks in Korean]

[Narrator] Pay attention to the translated word sir

in this scene in episode two,

between Ali, the Pakistani immigrant

and Sang-woo, the stockbroker.

[Sang-woo speaks in Korean]

The meaning of Sajangnim is the president of company

or CEO of the company.

The meaning itself is extended

to many different situations,

so anybody who looks like in a suit

and then a little bit older,

and then everybody starts calling that person Sajangnim.

[Ali speaks in Korean]

Ali is using that Sajangnim

and calling a lot of male characters that in the show.

[Narrator] Korean speakers use honorifics constantly

when speaking to each other.

You can hear it here,

[Ali speaks in Korean]

here,

[Gi-hun speaks in Korean]

and here.

[Gi-hun speaks in Korean]

It would be impossible

to translate all of these in Squid Game

because they're so ubiquitous,

but the way the characters address each other

shows the evolution of the relationship.

Listen carefully when Sang-woo asks Ali

to call him by his first name.

[Sang-woo speaks in Korean]

he's actually using this term.

[Sang-woo speaks in Korean]

Sang-woo asks Ali to call him Hyung,

then he's using intimate ending.

In the Korean language,

we don't call each other by our first names.

We are not really first name based society.

Hyung refers to older brother,

elder brother of a man.

That Hyung word as a big brother

is extended to other social relationships.

So then it means that we are close.

Before, we didn't know each other well,

but now we know each other and we are getting closer.

That's why that marble scene,

it was really heartbreaking

when Ali keeps calling [she speaks in Korean]

[Ali speaks in Korean]

So basically he thinks

that Sang-woo is almost like a brother to him,

that he was betrayed.

[somber music]

[Ali speaks in Korean]

In that sense, it's more heartbreaking

if you know what Hyung and Sajangnim mean

in the Korean language.

[Narrator] Another example

of an honorific-sharing relationship

is Han Mi-nyeo's use of Oppa.

[Mi-nyeo speaks in Korean]

[Deok-su speaks in Korean]

[Mi-nyeo speaks in Korean]

[Mi-nyeo speaks in Korean]

I don't think babe is a accurate translation for Oppa.

Oppa means older brother to a woman.

Oppa is definitely a family term,

a family relationship term

but at the same time,

it's extended to a romantic relationship

between a man and a woman.

So when you start between man and a woman,

a woman starts calling the other man Oppa,

that means that it's like,

okay, we are getting closer as a woman and a man.

Han Mi-nyeo character was trying to do that

with the Jang Deok-su character.

[Mi-neyo speaks in Korean]

[Deok-su speaks in Korean]

[Narrator] Because Oppa implies

that the woman is younger than the man,

when Deok-su says, Is that right?

[Deok-su speaks in Korean]

he's actually saying he's not older than her.

It's not like, I'm not a man or you are not a woman,

it's more like you look older than I am.

There's a switch to age difference

and she asks him,

How old do you think I am?

and then he's saying 49 and 39, 29

and he was playing with that age thing.

Address terms are extremely difficult

when you have to translate the Korean into English.

[Narrator] Next up, let's talk about swearing.

In some translations,

Korean cursing words are translated

into scumbag, jerk and idiot.

They don't really convey the harshness

of the Korean cursing words, cursing expressions.

[Deok-su speaks in Korean]

[Gi-hun speaks in Korean]

[119 speaks in Korean]

The word sae-kki is translated into jerk

most of the time

but I don't think it's the right translation.

Sae-kki literally means the baby animal,

like a baby of any animals.

If you do that,

you are basically cursing at your mother.

[Deok-su speaks in Korean]

So that's the whole idea,

but I think it's a little bit more serious than jerk.

[Deok-su speaks in Korean]

[Narrator] One of the difficulties of translation

is conveying meaning quickly

because subtitles are rarely over two lines.

But what's lost in translation

when a swear word is translated to a PG term?

It's not just about swearing words

and some expressions are very vulgar

and that also kind of stands out to me.

[Narrator] Let's take a look at the character Han Mi-nyeo.

[Mi-nyeo speaks in Korean]

This part, the translation is definitely sanitized.

[Mi-nyeo speaks in Korean]

That's definitely not scumbag.

Shibalnom is like-

okay, I just said it.

Oh my gosh, on camera.

Okay. It's like F word.

It's, I would say [beep] bastard.

That kind of thing.

No one even says scumbag anymore.

An interesting thing is,

her background was really not explained in the show.

I think the cursing

and using all this low-class expressions,

the way she's expressing that

I gotta go to the bathroom.

in a very vulgar way,

it's not cursing word

but the way she describes her state

was just really very bad.

Linguistically it's kind of interesting

to see her background through her use of language.

[Narrator] Translation is an incredibly difficult job

and the success of Squid Game

shows how well the show did overall.

Overall, it's pretty accurate

in terms of conveying the storyline.

I could ask a little bit more in subtlety

and a little bit like nuance.

If you don't know the language

and you have to depend on the subtitles,

of course you miss a lot of things.

It's not because it's the Korean language

and English translation,

it's any kind of language and translation.

[Narrator] Netflix international language series

continue to gain in popularity.

Squid Game's success likely means

we're gonna see more and more translations.

So what can audiences take away

from discussing the nuances of the original Korean?

English is the lingua franca

so everybody speaks English.

Even if you go to France,

then you can travel speaking English.

Sometimes the English speaking people think

that the other languages are not as a sophisticated

because you don't know,

and you don't speak that language.

Through subtitled shows,

you can say, okay, the other language I don't know,

but it has a lot of cultural nuances

and are richer in its own way.