Korean Translation Services

Where Korean is spoken and where your translation is accepted

Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea and one of the official languages of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in China. It has more than 75 million speakers. Korean immigration to the United States began in 1903, when the first workers arrived in Hawaii, and today large communities live in Los Angeles, New York and New Jersey, as well as in China, Japan, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. Most Korean documents we receive come from South Korea, and the destination decides the type of translation.

Korean translation services: Hangul, names and documents from Korea

Korean is one language, but the standard of South Korea, based on the speech of Seoul, and the standard of North Korea, based on that of Pyongyang, differ in spelling and in some words, and Korean documents follow their own formats. A good translation keeps every name and number of the original and reads naturally to whoever receives it.

• Hangul and hanja: Korean is written in Hangul, an alphabet of 24 basic letters grouped into syllable blocks, so ㅎ, ㅏ and ㄴ form 한. Older records and some names also carry Chinese characters (hanja), such as 金 for Kim, and the translation keeps them when they appear in the original.
• South and North: some spellings change between the two standards, so the surname 李 is written 이, Lee, in the South and 리, Ri, in the North, and the word for woman is 여자 in the South and 녀자 in the North.
• Names: the family name comes first and usually has one syllable, as in 김민준, Kim Min-jun, and a married woman keeps her own surname. The same name can be romanized in several ways, such as Lee, Yi or Rhee, or Park and Bak, so tell us the spelling used in your passport or US documents when you order.
• Dates and numbers: dates are written year, month and day, as in 2026년 10월 3일 or 2026.10.03, which is October 3, 2026. Large numbers are counted in units of ten thousand (만), so 1만 5천 is 15,000, and amounts in won (원) stay as in the original.
• Documents from South Korea: since 2008 the old family register (hojeok) has been replaced by certificates such as the family relation certificate (가족관계증명서), the basic certificate (기본증명서) and the marriage relation certificate (혼인관계증명서). The translation reproduces every stamp, seal and note, including the red seal of the issuing office.