Sokimex boss chastised for being proud of his ethnicity
April 21, 2008
VIA The Mirror: Moneaksekar Khmer sees how low it can sink in the space of a single story.
“Previously, many people said that Sok Kong, the president of the Sokimex Company, is a Yuon [Vietnamese] and a former Yuon expert, but Sok Kong had always denied this. However, recently readers of a Yuon newspaper found that Sok Kong told Viet Bao [Việt Báo], published on the Internet, that he is very proud to be born as a Yuon. The Yuon newspaper Viet Bao, is published on the Internet since 2004, but not many people here knew it. Just recently, readers of this Yuon newspaper, who can read and write Yuon, translated an article into Khmer and English, and posted it on the Internet worldwide.
“Khmer nationals who can read and write Yuon, if they want to read the newspaper which published that Sok Kong is proud to be born as a Yuon, can go to this web site:
http://vietbao.vn/the-gioi/tio-la-nguoi-viet-nam/40056609/159
Revolting. And not just because the word “Youn” appears 36 times in a single story. You could use the word “Vietnamese” instead and it would still be the same repugnant garbage.
Such truculent racism from the political opposition, however, is nothing new. What’s striking is that The Mirror appears happy to play along. The Mirror translated every other word of the story into English, but for some inexplicable reason it decided to leave this one racially supercharged word untranslated. The question is why? Was it mere editorial oversight, or something more sinister?
April 21, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Maybe the Mirror did not want to whitewash the Moneaksekar Khmer’s racism?
April 22, 2008 at 12:35 am
I agree such blatant “racism” is revolting. When I let the Bloom women sell the cans from the cafe, some refused to sell to the Vietnamese Ait-jai, calling them “youn” and “ot la-or” and what not. I said there are good and bad in every nationality (race is the wrong word, as Asians are all from the same–Mongoloid–race). I’m Singaporean. If I thought badly of other nationalities, such as Khmers, I wouldn’t be here to help. I just don’t understand chauvinistic people. Go read http://cambodiacalling.blogspot.com/2008/04/sex-trade-in-cambodia-childish-khmers.html for another example of misplaced Khmer pride.
April 22, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Since many years ago, as a principle of producing the Mirror translations from Khmer to English, we leave the original Yuon and Siem when they are used in the original, but give the standard English wording in square brackets in English, following the first appearance in an article, such as Yuon [Vietnam] or [Vietnamese], whatever applies, and Siem [Thai] or [Thailand]; we try to be also consistent in the English translations to make a difference between Khmer or Cambodia, according to the original, saying “Khmae” or “Kampuchea.”
This is an effort to “mirror” the original, also in the use of different words.
Similarly, some newspapers use long titles, or at least “Mr.” or “Madame” or some designation in front of a name, or nothing if the original uses just the name only; we try to keep the same in the translations. You may have noticed that some papers use this procedure to express their appreciation or displeasure about people in their news.
While we try to be consistent, sometimes some minor oversights still happen. Sorry for that.
April 22, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Thanks for elaborating, Mirror. I was pretty sure there was a policy. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. If you translate “Khmae” to Khmer and “Kampuchea” to Cambodia, why not Siem to Thai, and Yuon to Vietnam/ese? Just curious.
April 24, 2008 at 8:31 am
Sorry, maybe I was not clear enough in the detail. In the case of “Khmae/Khmer” and Kampuchea/Cambodia” we stay with the same “root” words in the original and in the English language. There is no need to explain much in “mirroring” the original. – When it comes to the neighboring countries and the alternative possibilities of using either Siem or Youn, instead of Thai/land and Vietnam/ese, the choice of the possible alternatives have quite some strong emotional implications. – To use the word “Yuon” is considered by many as derogatory, while others say “it is just a traditionally used word. – For persons who are not so familiar with the emotions related to the use of these words, often the example is used that the word “Negro” was used for people of African descent in the USA, while in the course of a new awareness of the burdens of history related to the very presence of people of African descent in the USA, the word “Black” became the new, standard word, and other, formerly common words are considered derogatory.
May 1, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Here we go again. I suggest that those of you who are misguided about the traditional Khmer proper noun words for foreingers, especially the Vietnamese, to read up on the information below. The country is Kampuchea and the people are Khmer. So when the French/Americans romanized the name to “Cambodge/Cambodia and Cambodian(s)” do you consider that the French/Americans are racist also? So stop telling the Khmer people what they can or cannot use! The Khmer can’t properly say the English word of “Vietnamese or Vietnam”. The letter V sound simply does not exist in the Khmer phoneme. The Khmer don’t go around tucking their bottom lip to produce the sound of the English letter V. So stop telling the Khmer people to use the English term Vietnamse/Vietnam. The Khmer mother tonuge is not English. Why don’t you also ask the Vietnamese to call the Khmer by the Khmer true name? I bet you can’t even pronounce the Khmer phonetically. No one in the region can either. The Vietnamese call the Khmer as “Cao Mien/Mien”, the Thais/Laos call the Khmer as “Khamen”, etc. The Khmer word of “YOUN” spelled in French is highly derived from the Chinese term of Yueh, the name of the Vietnamese. Just stop this hating on the Khmer people. If you want to hate, I am sure you have internal issues that you need to resolve. For your information, the Cham and the Thai also call the Vietnamese as “YOUN”. If the Khmer want to look down on the Vietnamese, they have other terms to use. Similarly, the American GIs called the Vietnamese as “gooks” and Japanese as “Japs” and Chinese as “Chinks”, and so on and so forth.
What researchers wrote on the Khmer term “YOUN”.
quote:Ben Kiernan wrote, “Since the Vietnamese called themselves “Yueh” (Viets”, Khmers may have adopted this word for them fairly accurately. “Youn” more likely derives from “Yueh” than Yavana. The word “YOUN” is spelled in Khmer with the subscripted dipthong “uo”, not a “v” like Yavana. Therefore, “Youn” does not mean “savages” but simply “Vietnamese”. Conversely, the traditional Vietnamese word for Cambodians, Cao Mien, has also been translated as “highland barbarians.” However, it has no such meaning and probably derives from the word khmaer or Khmer.”
quote:Kenneth So wrote, “My own research indicates that the word “Youn” came from the word “Yueh”. The Mandarin Chinese calls Vietnam, Yueh Nam. The word “Nam” means south in Chinese. “Yueh” indicates the name of the people of that region. Therefore, “Yueh” means Viet or Vietnamese in Chinese and “Yueh Nam” means the “Yueh” people of the south. In this case, south means south of China. The North pronounces it Yeknam (with a “Y” sound).
Chou Ta-Kuan (Zhou Daguan), the celebrated Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia in the 13th century, indicated in his report that there was already a large population of Chinese settling in Cambodia at that time. He said that the Chinese preferred life in the Khmer Empire because it was easier than in China. There were a lot of Chinese men marrying the native Cambodian women. I don’t know when Khmer started to call the Vietnamese “Youn”, but the habit may have been picked up from the Chinese settlers who lived in Cambodia at the time. The word “Youn” may have derived from the Chinese word “Yueh” to indicate the Vietnamese. If one starts to think about it, “Viet” (as pronounced by the North Vietnamese) or “Yeak” (as pronounced by the South Vietnamese) sounds very similar to “Yueh”; and “Yueh”, meaning Vietnamese, in turn sounds very similar to “Youn”. George Coedes, the French expert on the Southeast Asian classical study, found an earlier evidence of the word “Yuon” inscribed in Khmer on a stele dating to the time of the Khmer King Suryavarman I (1002-1050.)
“Youn” does not mean savage as Dr. Roberts had mistakenly indicated in his writing. Savage in Cambodian means “Pourk Prey” or “Phnong”. Cambodians calls Vietnamese “Youn” the same way they call Indian “Khleung”, Burmese “Phoumea”, Chinese “Chen”, and French “Barang”.
When the Vietnamese calls Cambodian “Mien” why did the Western press and scholars not report it to be a derogatory word also? If I were to follow the logical thinking of the Western press and scholars, then “Mien” must be a derogatory word also. In the late 17th century, the Vietnamese court of Hue had indiscriminately changed the names of the Cambodian princesses Ang Mei, Ang Pen, Ang Peou, and Ang Snguon to the Vietnamese sounding names of Ngoc-van, Ngoc-bien, Ngoc-tu, and Ngoc-nguyen, respectively. Also they changed the name of Phnom Penh to Nam Vang. Why do scholars and press stay silent on these subjects.”
quote:Dr. Bunreoun Thach wrote, “After the French was defeated in its Indochina, in post 1954 Geneva Conference, the Ngo Dinh Diem regime of Republic of Vietnam shown its true claws with his famous decree of August 29, 1956. He simply erased the Khmer nationality from the Khmer Krom by calling them “Nguoi Viet goc Mien” (Vietnamese of Khmer origin). This was a new term which was adopted by all following Vietnamese governments. Gerald C. Hickey, in his Accommodation and Coalition in South Vietnam, 1970, said: “The policy of Ngo Dinh Diem government was to integrate the ethnic minorities into the national framework by forced assimilation.”
February 7, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Calling khmers in vietnam vietnamese of khmer origin sounds Ok to me?
I cant believe that the reason the khmers wont say vietnam or vietnamese is because their pronunciation is poor.
Even without the V sounded or sounding like W we simple barang can understand it.
I like the young people in cambodia who do use the V word and also embrace thai music,Tv and food as well as modern vietnamese culture.
People like the above poster could do well to forget perjoratives and just get along with other races.
Ancient squabbles have no place in this globalised world and any sort of racism is abhorrent to many of us barangs.
Thats why we are in this interesting little backwater.