"American Bastards" is not a good translation of 미국놈

A few weeks ago, CNN, among others, fell victim to one of my least favorite examples of a human translation that reads like a computer translated it. The headline reads "North Korea state media celebrates gift to 'American bastards,'" the "gift" being the ICBM tested on the Fourth of July.

This is an example of a translator getting a little giddy. True, 미국 (pronounced mee-gook) means "America," or, in an adjectival sense, "American." And you can certainly find dictionaries that will tell you that 놈 (pronounced like the word "gnome") means "bastard." But there are two caveats. First, even in its pejorative sense, the word has never meant what we mean by "bastard," i.e. "an illegitimate child." That's just one of many pejorative terms one could use to translate the idea of the word as an insult. Others are: pigs, dogs, jerks, slime, etc. I really think some dictionary maker long ago picked "bastard" as the go-to translation, and people have been automatically following that for so long, we've come to believe that really is what it means. (For reference, the Korean profanity Wiki page, which had this term first on the list.)

Secondly, Koreans, just like us immoral Westerners, have been getting a little freer with their swearing in the last few decades years. Words that used to shock no longer do. "Gnome" just does not carry the hand-over-mouth level of resonance that "bastard" does. In fact, there are many senses in which the word doesn't even mean anything particularly bad. You can call someone a "good gnome," (착한 놈) which I would translate as something like "a good dude."

Merciless punishment to American imperialists!

One of the best South Korean movies of the past decade was called 착한놈 나쁜놈 이상한놈, or "The good gnome, the bad gnome, and the weird gnome." Its title for English-speaking audiences  was "The Good, the Bad, and the Weird," playing on the classic Western. That was the perfect translation, and it correctly didn't even include "gnome." In South Korea, the term is now used on television without it scandalizing anyone. That Gangnam Style song everyone was freaking out about a few years ago includes the saying that "a jumping gnome has a flying gnome above him," meaning "no matter how good you think you are, there's always someone better." Anyone who translated that sentence as "the flying bastard is above the jumping bastard" is an idiot.

Here's what Naver.com, my go-to English-Korean dictionary site, has to say about the word "gnome":

One might argue that North and South Korean dialects use the word differently, and that the word carries a stronger feeling in North Korea. Possibly this has some truth, but whatever meanings things have in the beginning, those fade over time. North Korea has been calling Americans "Mee Gook Gnome" for so long, it's lost a lot of its resonance. That's just the term they use now for us in certain contexts.

At the very least, a South Korea reading North Korean pronouncements about the U.S. does not think "bastards" when he reads 미국놈, which means an American reading a translation with the word in it is getting a different feeling than a South Korean reading Korean.

Cast out the invading imperialist American forces, who are the source of all unhappiness and suffering!

At its worst, the word carries a sense of dismissiveness--"punk" is far closer to it than "bastard." I'd translate it just "Americans," or, if you must keep something pejorative in it, maybe "Yanks." Forcing "bastards" in there is heavy-handed. Not every translation needs something in English to account for everything there in the original. Putting it in there seems calculated to get a reaction, to make the text seem more derisible and ridiculous.

When CNN and others yuk it up at the crazed invective of North Korean media, it gives people the perception that North Korea is not rational, that they can't even form coherent sentences. Public discourse about this story was partially sidetracked by head shakes over the use of "bastards" (always in the headline and always in scare quotes), which meant pundits glossed over more important subjects. The only conclusions one can reach from reading "American bastards" are that either North Korea hates America so completely that war is inevitable, or that North Korea is so foolish we can afford to ignore them. Both of these assumptions have their own dangers.

If the Americans start a war of aggression, they will be the first destroyed! (This uses the term "gnome." Isn't it already clear from context that there's a negative connotation? Do I need "bastards?")