The horror of communicating with North Korea when its language translation is as wretched as the new statement from Kim Jong-Un shows it is.

I'm seeing a lot of focus on Kim Jong-Un's use of the word "dotard" to insult Donald Trump,* and it is indeed a powerfully distracting word. But what's really important here is the entire statement and how much it says about the quality of the translation between Korean and English within Kim's regime and what that might mean about how he hears what our government is saying to him.

Here's the full text, "released on Friday by KCNA, the North Korean state news agency." According to the NYT is "the first time a North Korean leader directly issued a statement to the world under his name."

I'm going to go through it line by line, because I want you to see the crudeness of the translation and try to imagine what was in the original that a more skilled translation might have revealed. I'll boldface egregious translation problems and put my own suggestion in brackets:

The speech made by the U.S. president in his maiden address on [in] the U.N. arena in the prevailing serious circumstances, in which the situation on the Korean Peninsula has been rendered tense as never before and is inching closer to a touch-and-go state, is arousing worldwide concern.

I suspect this tracks the word order in Korean, but it sounds very awkward in English. The huge distance between the subject ("speech") and the verb ("is") comes across as bizarre.

Shaping the general idea of [Imagining] what he would say, I expected he would make stereotyped [scripted], prepared remarks a little different from what he used to utter in his office [the way he tends to speak from the White House] on the spur of the moment as he had to speak [because he was speaking] on the world’s biggest official diplomatic stage.

But, far from making remarks of any persuasive power that can be viewed to be [as] helpful to defusing tension, he made unprecedented rude nonsense one has never heard from any of his predecessors [spoke rude nonsense of a sort that the world has never before heard from a U.S. President].

A frightened dog barks louder.

I’d like to advise Trump to exercise prudence in selecting words and to be considerate of whom he speaks to [of those to whom he speaks] when making a speech in front of the world.

The mentally deranged behavior of the U.S. president openly expressing on [in] the U.N. arena the unethical will to “totally destroy” a sovereign state, beyond the boundary of threats of regime change or overturn of social system [which goes beyond threats of regime change or threats to overturn the social system], makes even those with normal thinking faculty [those of us who are sane] think about [begin to lose our] discretion and composure.

Here's another wide separation of subject ("behavior") and verb ("makes"). I think he's saying Trump's behavior is so crazy that normal people are about to lose our minds.

His remarks remind me of such words as “political layman” and “political heretic” which were in vogue in reference to Trump during his presidential election campaign.

The quoted phrases were not in vogue in English. I think we're getting a translation back into English of something that began in English. I'm not sure exactly what. "Heretic" is an especially vivid word in English. What was the original word in English? What is the Korean word, and what does it mean? How does the idea expressed in Korean relate to the way the North Korean leader understands politics? That's a complete mystery to me, and I wonder how much of a mystery it is to Trump (who, I suspect, gets very quickly to a simple understanding of other people).

After taking office Trump has rendered the world restless through [destabilized the world with]  threats and blackmail against all countries in the world. He is unfit to hold the prerogative of supreme command [leadership] of a country, and he is surely a rogue and a gangster fond of playing with fire, rather than a politician.

"Gangster" — what does that mean to him?

His remarks which described the U.S. option through straightforward expression of his [straightforward remarks about what the U.S. may do] will have [have]** convinced me, rather than frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct [the path I have chosen is correct] and that it is the one I have to follow to the last [it is the path I must follow to the end].

Now that Trump has denied the existence of [denied the legitimacy of] and insulted me and my country in front of the eyes of the world and made the most ferocious declaration of a war in history that he would destroy [and threatened to destroy] the D.P.R.K. [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], we will consider with seriousness [seriously consider] exercising of a corresponding, highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history [an equally high-level, hard-line response].

Action is the best option in treating the dotard who, hard of hearing, is uttering only what he wants to say.

"Dotard" is, actually, fine. It's a simple, memorable word that is less childish than "old man" or "geezer." I'm interested in the idea that a person who is hard of hearing says only what he wants to say, but I think he means: The old man doesn't listen, he just keeps talking, so there's little point in trying to talk to him, and our best option is to act.

As a man representing the D.P.R.K. and on behalf of the dignity and honor of my state and people and on my own, I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the U.S. pay dearly for his speech calling for totally destroying the D.P.R.K.

That sentence works in English. It's a clear threat. More subtle are the hints of how he sees himself: he represents his "state and people" and he also acts "on my own."

This is not a rhetorical expression loved by Trump [I know this is not what Trump is hoping to hear].

I'm not going to tamper with the last 3 sentences. They come across as clear and very effective in English (thought obviously I hope he's bluffing).

I am now thinking hard about what response he could have expected when he allowed such eccentric words to trip off his tongue.

Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation.

I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.

___________________

* To give one example, the NYT has an entire article "Kim Jong-un Called Trump a ‘Dotard.’ How Harsh Is That Burn?"

** In the comments to this post, Ignorance is Bliss says (correctly): " I think you are mistaken about the word will. It is used as a noun (his will), not as part of a verb (will have)." A good word editor would see ambiguity like that and rearrange the sentence to eliminate it.