Can somebody confirm this to me since I can't read Korean, just using Google translator.

https://twitter.com/mbcnews/status/709557327616024576

HONORARY 9-dan.

And the certificate/diploma number is "001" --
so apparently there's no precedent.

( I'm guessing Mr. Lee Sedol's 9-dan pro certificate does not have the word 'honorary' on it. )

Yes they did award an honory professional 9-dan to alphago. The certificate is written in a very old form of Korean, mixing Chinese characters in the middle of a sentence, like the current Japanese writing system. The vocabulary also feels quite archaic. An interesting point is that this type of Korean writing can be very easily translated to Japanese by 1-to-1 matching, althogh it may not always be idiomatic Japanese.

名譽九段 ALPHAGO
貴下는 平素 棋道硏磨에 精進하고 棋士로서 人格陶冶에 힘써 棋品이 入神의 域에 이르렀으므로 九段을 允許합니다

名譽九段 ALPHAGO
貴下は 平素 棋道硏磨に 精進して 棋士として 人格陶冶に 努めて 棋品が 入神の 域に 達しましたので 九段を 允許します

And now AlphaGo is ranked at number two just below Ke Jie in goratings.org

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news/20 ... l?338f83c0






Edit: As Minjae Kim points out the yonhapnews article translation was confusing. I haven't seen the original Korean version but I changed the quote above to be more clear what they're talking about.

What a such a terrible translation (am I right with the grammar?) done by the Yonhap News English website team. No official document in Korea is ever written in "Chinese". It may use some Chinese characters for Chinese loanwords, but that is not "Chinese".

As a Chinese person, I can read that mostly with the exception of a couple of characters. From what I understand, Hangul wasn't the official language until after the Japanese occupation which is during WW II so I presume before that (e.g. around 90 years ago) official documents were all in Chinese?

Hangul has been around since 1443, and has been used to write all official documents in Korean since 1894.


Anyway, it's true that they used Chinese characters prior to Hangul, but to me, a document "written using Chinese characters" is different than a document "written in Chinese".

For one, in Japan, Korea, and China, the characters have deviated (simplified characters, and sometimes other slight deviations for traditional ones). Sometimes there are characters in one language but not in the other, etc.

Anyway, it's true that they used Chinese characters before Hangul, but I would say that a better translation would indicate this explicitly, instead of saying that it was written in Chinese.

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be immersed

Fair enough - agree that would probably be a better translation. Just seemed a bit weird to say they are not Chinese when they read so much like Chinese (way more than what I would consider merely "loan words" as I'm able to read it without any knowledge of Korean). On second thought, I do think I see your and MinjaeKim's point in that context also matters (and it does seem weird for the KBA to intend writing this document in Chinese).

In my opinion, "Chinese characters" are "Chinese" in the sense that they originally come from China. But I prefer to use "Chinese characters" in this case - it still indicates that the characters come from China, yet distinguishes from the Chinese language which may sometimes have slightly different characters, and nearly always has different pronunciation in this context.

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be immersed