It’s the beginning of Chuseok [Korean Thanksgiving] weekend. I received the following text message from my boss last night on my phone.
넉넉하고 풍요로운 마음으로 카르마 가족 모두에게 감사의 인사를 드립니다. 짧은 연휴지만 소중하고 사랑스런 가족 친지들과 즐겁고 행복함만 가득한 한가위 되시기를 진심으로 기원합니다 카르마원장 드림
I more or less understood it, but this morning I sat down to decipher it in detail. I plugged it into googletranslate and got this:
Karma family to say a special thank you to all generous and prosperous mind. A short holiday, but a dear and loving family and friends filled with happy and joyful Chuseok become is my sincere hope that karma ledger Dream
Which is somewhat approximate, but the conclusion, “Karma ledger dream,” is a bit of a howler.
Here is my own effort at a slightly more systematic translation. First, a word-for-word breakdown.
넉넉하고 풍요로운 마음으로 카르마 가족
generous-AND abundant-be-PART heart-THROUGH Karma Family
모두에게 감사의 인사를 드립니다.
everyone-TO thank-GEN salutation-OBJ give-FORMAL
짧은 연휴지만
brief-PART holiday-BUT
소중하고 사랑스런 가족 친지들과
important-AND beloved-PART family acquaintance-PLURAL-WITH
즐겁고 행복함만 가득한 한가위
joyful-AND happiness-ONLY full-PART harvestmoon
되시기를 진심으로 기원합니다
become-DEFERENTIAL-GERUND-OBJ sincerity-THROUGH wish-FORMAL
카르마원장 드림
Karma-director give-SUBST
And finally, a roughly idiomatic translation, with an effort to reflect the idiosyncratic phone-text-based lack-of-punctuation of the original.
We give a salutation of thanks to everyone in the Karma family with a generous and abundant heart. Though it is but a brief holiday, we sincerely wish you a harvestmoon [Chuseok] filled with only joyful and happy beloved family and friends from Karma’s Director
