To start our research about the
South Korea capital’s establishments and organizations and see how and in what
way they adapt to foreign cultures, we decided to begin with an analysis of
restaurants’ cultural adaptation.
Through this article, we are going
to analyse how food facilities in Seoul are adapted to foreign cultures by
looking at the layout and content of their menu. We won’t focus on the actual
meals that are offered but on the way they are communicated to clients.
After investigating and experiencing
several food facilities during our journey in Seoul, we decided to separate restaurants
into four categories:
- Worldwide
known fast-food chain
- Medium-standing
Korean restaurant
- Small
Korean food facility
- Street
food stand
Not surprisingly, we noticed that worldwide known fast-food chains such
as Mc Donald, KFC, Burger King... are the food facilities that adapt the most
to foreign cultures. Indeed, looking at their menu we can see that the name of
each set is written in Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese. A photo is
displayed for each dish and prices are also written using Arabic numbers. You
have to know that Korean language uses two different set of cardinal numbers:
Korean native numbers and Sino-Korean numbers. Most of the time Arabic numbers
are used to indicate prices but sometimes prices are written using Sino-Korean
numbers (based on Chinese numbers).
About medium-standing Korean restaurants’ menu, as you can see on the
picture below, photos are usually available. The Korean name of the meal is
most of the time translated into English but not the description of it. The
name of the dish can also sometimes be translated in Chinese.
In those cases it is up to us to
give free rein to our imagination and guess which ingredients constitute the
meal exactly.
If you want to feel what it is like
to order a meal just relying on a picture, go visit School Food’s website (a
quite famous Korean restaurant chain) and see for yourself: http://www.schoolfood.co.kr/menu
Regarding small Korean food facilities, no actual paper menu are available
inside the restaurants, names and prices of meals offered are displayed on the
walls and windows. No other language than Korean is used to describe the dishes
offered in this kind of restaurant. To order a satisfying meal in those food
facilities, luck will have to play a major role!
Street food stands do not offer menu, food available is displayed in front of customers.
To place an order and know the price of what is bought, body language is
required as the stand holder usually do not speak English.
The English speaking level of
waiters and waitresses in food facilities in Seoul are diverse. Most of them
have knowledge about the English language but advanced communication remains
difficult.
Overall, restaurants in Seoul tend
to translate minimum information into English, so it can be understand by most
foreigners (assuming they speak English). Japanese and Chinese translations are
also sometimes available. The choice of these three languages makes sense
knowing that they are Korea’s top three international tourism markets. The
graph below shows us that tourists from those three countries represent a high
percentage of overall tourism revenues for South Korea (Visa, 2012):
If you ever went to South Korea or
experienced similar situations in restaurants in a foreign country please leave
comments, we would like to know your opinion. Do not hesitate to leave your
impressions about this article as well!
References:
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