I understand if you haven’t heard of the ‘Basic Certificate’. I too was completely unaware of its existence for the first thirty years of my life. It was only after I was given the task of translating the document that I had to look up what it was about and found out. This article will give a brief explanation of the document and a little lesson I learned from translating it.
It is a legal document issued by the Korean government since 2008. The name of the document is self-explanatory. It shows the most basic information about the applicant and, of course, certifies that he or she is a Korean citizen. It begins with the name of the applicant followed by the date of birth, the identification number that is assigned to every Korean at birth, and the gender. Some more details are listed below, such as the place of birth (often the name of the hospital), the date of registration, the person requesting the registration, and the state government that accepted the registration. Up to this point, it may sound like a birth certificate, but it is not. Korea has its own form for the birth certificate. It is what follows after the information mentioned above that separates it from the others. Depending on the purpose of the document, it may contain extra information such as name change, nationality change or others. It is not a complex form and is often done on a single sheet of paper. The document replaces and improves on another form of document that has been very familiar to Koreans for decades. The legality and complexity behind why the country had to take such a big step to ditch the old way that Koreans were all too used to might be beyond the scope of this article. Instead, I would like to end by sharing what I discovered while translating this document.
Being Korean myself, I was reminded while researching this basic certificate that I know very little about the legal system in my own country. Quite frankly, why this document had to replace the old one was beyond me, and that’s why I couldn’t go into more detail above. Of course, as a translator I am not obliged to know the whole story. I just have to translate the words into the appropriate ones in English and I am justified. However, it was an opportunity for me to think about something: when it comes to something legal, how much is done in my life with full confidence without having the slightest idea. It’s a pretty flimsy life.