The “News & Notices” section in Ewha’s Korean homepage offers not only campus news, but also announcements and administrative schedules like tuition payment deadlines and procedures. While some campus news are provided, however, such vital information is neither updated nor given equal mention in the English homepage.
After receiving the admission letter from Ewha this year, Cristina Chun (Liberal Arts, 1), born and raised in Argentina, tried searching for information on tuition payments in the English homepage’s “News & Notices” section in vain.
“I could not find instructions on how and when to pay for the tuition,” Chun said. “Without my Korean friend’s help, I almost would have missed the tuition payment deadline.”
As translating every Korean word into English can be agitating for English-speaking students, a properly managed English homepage is essential for other international students as well.
Born and raised in Thailand, Chris Ahn (Social Science, 1) had to do a word-for-word translation from Korean to English because the English homepage had no notices on how to register for lockers in the Ewha Campus Complex (ECC). “I now gave up on the English homepage,” Ahn said. Ahn failed to register for her ECC locker this fall semester.
The Office of Communications maintains information on Ewha’s homepage. In updating news onto the English homepage, an official in the Office of Communications explained that the office’s faculty members translate news that attract international students or those interested in Ewha from overseas.The “News & Notices” section in the English homepage, however, only updates news, excluding notices.
“Specific organizations within the university are in charge of making the notices related to their departments and thus they select certain notices considered important and translate them into English,” the official said.
Since the Office of Communications cannot necessarily intervene in updating all notices in English, the absence of recently updated notices remains as an unsolved case.
An updated homepage is a necessity for international students.
“The English homepage is a central medium not only for foreign exchange students but also for foreign Ewha students to extract information related to Ewha. I hope the English homepage would grow to become as useful as the Korean homepage,” Constance Williams (Liberal Arts, 1) said.
Lee Hea-won
heawon_lee@ewhain.net