A A Critical Analysis of Korean Transcription: A Case Study of Tourist Attraction Names

Abstract

This research aimed to examine the transcription of Korean based on a corpus of tourist-attraction names collected from six travel guidebooks, categorized into periods before and after the Royal Institute of Thailand promulgated the Korean Transcription Principles B.E. 2555 (2012). A total of 664 transcribed words were collected. The results indicated that the majority of transcriptions were not comply with the official principles in either period. The primary cause was inconsistent Romanization of Korean, which resulted in practical problems and obstacles in real-world usage. Accordingly, this research demonstrated a critical analysis of Korean transcription issues across several aspects, including the translation of generic terms (elements indicating the type of proper noun), distinctions between long and short vowels, distinctions among allophones of the same phoneme, sound changes, and other transcription problems. The goal is to highlight these issues and to propose guidelines for improving and further developing the Korean transcription principles.