Catalan to Korean: clock readings, counted objects and courteous address
Decode a Catalan quarter-hour before forming the Korean time
In the Catalan quarter-hour system, the named hour is the following hour. CPNL gives dos quarts d’una for 12:30. A Korean rendering must express that clock reading rather than combine “two,” “quarters” and “one” as independent quantities. This is not merely a vocabulary problem: a literal treatment could put an appointment at the wrong hour even if each Catalan number was recognized correctly.
Korean then makes a distinction of its own. The original How to Study Korean lesson uses native Korean numbers for the clock hour and Sino-Korean numbers for the minutes, illustrating 2시 30분 as 두 시 삼십 분. First resolve the Catalan time into its actual hour and minutes; only then interpret the two Korean number systems. A mixed-looking Korean expression is normal here and does not imply that two different times have been combined.
A numeral alone does not describe what is being counted
Catalan can directly combine a numeral with the item being counted. Korean frequently introduces a counter selected for the kind of entity or event. The lesson distinguishes 명 for people, 개 for things and 번 for occurrences of an action. For a Catalan sentence about meeting two people twice, the people and the occasions are separate quantities. The target should not treat both numbers as counts of the same thing.
The lesson’s 사람 두 명 illustrates two people, while its examples with 번 count how often something happens. These are useful contrasts when a Catalan message contains several numbers but omits repeated nouns. Recover which number belongs to participants and which belongs to repetitions before judging the Korean word order. A counter is part of expressing the quantity, rather than a new object that the translator has inserted into the event.
Catalan courteous address is not a Korean pronoun lookup
CPNL’s administrative guidance distinguishes vós from vostè and recommends consistent treatment within a document. Korean introduces a different set of social choices. The Seoul National University chapter explains that honorific distinctions cannot be reduced to replacing a plain second-person pronoun with a polite one: a title or another expression may be required instead. A Catalan courteous pronoun does not guarantee that a Korean second-person pronoun is the natural solution.
The chapter also warns that 당신 has restricted conversational uses, despite often being presented as an equivalent of “you.” For a Catalan request to a teacher or official, retaining the professional relationship may therefore be more informative than searching for a single target word corresponding to vós. This preserves the purpose of the source courtesy while allowing Korean to express respect through its own choice of address and speech style.
Read Korean blocks as syllables, not individual pictures
The National Institute of Korean Language explains that Hangeul combines consonant and vowel letters into syllabic blocks. Its 우유 example means milk; the initial ㅇ in each block has no sound. Catalan readers should therefore not assign an independent sound to every visible shape or insert spaces between all component letters. The Korean word is written as an integrated sequence, even though its arrangement differs from Catalan’s linear alphabet.
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