Korean genders and family members

Hello,

I’m currently watching 17 but 30 and getting slightly frustrated with either the translation or the script. At one point, a character mentions his nephew. Another person – the housemaid – refers to this nephew as a “niece.” She even uses the pronoun “she.” The first character never thinks that this is weird. Sure, everyone is weird, like really weird, but still… Why doesn’t he care? Is it the translation or the Korean language, where nieces and nephews are just like younger sisters and brothers: genderless ?!

PS: I’ve written the post in this manner because I dislike spoilers. It’s also fairly early into the drama.

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You should write to Viki, As far as I know 30 but 17 isn’t Korean -> English translated (or segged) by volunteers but by Viki Staff. I don’t think volunteers are allowed to edit subs without permission.

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Viki staff ?! You mean, Viki has in-house translators ?!

Yes they do have some. They sometimes step in to sub when something goes to slow to their liking and all projects Viki staff does manage is english subbed by staff. Or maybe the content provider also provides subs no idea.

You can recognize Viki staff by this badge on their profile:
https://1.viki.io/badges/staff.png?s=60x60&q=h&cb=1

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Isn’t it genderless when they talk, thats why he doesnt notice?.. :thinking: :slight_smile:

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yes, viki translated it. we only could sub into our languages

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There were a number of other mistakes. I p.m. 'd the translator, I wrote in Team Discussions, nobody ever answered. Then I p.m.'d Camille and she said she’d pass on the suggestion.
(One big mistake I noticed was that the subs were repeatedly referring to two chicks, where there was only one. I mean… this means the person wasn’t even watching the show, as Chicky was almost like a main character there!).

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They once forgot a complete segment in Lawless Lawyer so one person was still talking but no sub appeared. I PMed, 2 weeks later I PMed again as a reminder and after about a month it was finally fixed. I was like how could you even miss it?! It was in the middle of a conversation between two people so not even a random whisper at a random time or something.

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조카 can be translated as nephew and as niece (according to papago(naver) translation), so it’s genderless. In the drama 30 but 17 this resulted in a misunderstanding. Therefore it was part of the plot. The english translation may seem weird, because it reflects how these two people assume different genders.

Edit: After writing this post I was wondering how to translate it without using a gender. My only idea was to use “child of …” (in case of 30 but 17 “child of your/my sister”) The child than could be refered to as “it”

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Oh ho, thank you very much. Yeah, it had to be something like that, one big misunderstanding. Actually, the whole drama is like that. It’s pretty funny. I like it a lot. Again, thank you. Have a pleasant weekend.