shinyglittery Posted April 8, 2014 Share Posted April 8, 2014 So many people are still considering getting a translator here in the forums or a translator someone they talked to in a forum recommended to them. Unless you hire the translator from a consulate it's always a plastic surgery agent/consultant. Always. I can't say it more clearly: ALWAYS. That's why I will use the word agent below. Many people simply don't know any better and it leads to so many people losing money and sometimes a lot more. Reasons for not getting a translator: 1. They will find out your personal information though your chats and some of them will claim they are your consultant even if you don't choose their services. They will contact clinics and tell them to add their fees to your prices because they recommended you to the clinics. 2. Using an agent will add commission to your prices, always. Any agent who claims different is lying, lying, lying. This is on top of whatever you're paying for their "services". 3. Most surgeons and the staff at many clinics speaks English. Almost all clinics have a Mandarin translator, you will never need a Chinese agent!! (Chinese speakers, please take that seriously...) 4. agents will always recommend you to the few clinics that they have a consultant contract/"understanding" with. These clinics usually include Regen, ID, Grand, Jewelry, Banobagi, VIP, BK. 5. if you want to visit other clinics, they will play along. the tactics they use: 5-1. they will make a previous consultation last longer and then you'll find out you don't have enough time for two more so you're pressured to choose their clinic instead of the clinic you wanted to choose, or your consultation at the clinic you chose will be a lot shorter than you wanted. 5-2. they will purposefully mistranslate things so the consultation will seem to be going nowhere or the surgeon doesn't seem to understand what you want. they might also mistranslate what the surgeon says to you so you get the wrong idea. 5-3. they will tell tell you about someone who had bad surgery at the clinic you want to go to 5-4. they will introduce you to other people, their "friends" and those people will tell you they know people who had bad surgery at the clinics you want to go to or good surgery at Regen/ID/Grand/whatever clinic the agent can easily get their commission from 5-5. they can go as far as showing their "friend's" and "relatives" who had surgery at the clinics they want you to go to. the images are either of surgeries done elsewhere or photoshopped. to anyone who doesn't know: it's possible and EASY to photoshop an image so that no one but a professional photographer can tell it's been edited and even then you can't tell unless you open it in an advanced image editor and look at some values. there are many programs just for editing face shape, lips, eyes, skin texture and so on. any image can be perfectly edited 5-6. they will be sick or they have to go somewhere just when you were supposed to go to a consultation with a clinic you chose 5-7. they will ask the clinics you chose to add their commission to their prices and they will make their commission to those clinics ridiculously high so that the clinic is forced to give you a ridiculously high price which will cause you to not choose that clinic. 5-8. some of the ones with medical knowledge or years of experience through being an agent might even refine and improve what a bad surgeon tells you (though this is probably rare) 5-9. it's possible the clinics they work together with will have arranged beverages, free tests, free shampooing, free food or something small like that that will make you feel really good but doesn't really cost them much. it will however make those clinics seem better in your eyes 5-10. there are many more ways in which they can manipulate you. some of them might not be very smart but anyone who's done it for a long time can only do it because they're smart. Don't think they can't think of ways to fool you and lie to you. 6. Korea is a very "sales" oriented society and anyone in Seoul will want to use you in any way possible. Anyone can decide to become an agent and get commission from you behind your back, including people you got to know in a situation/for reasons that had nothing to do with plastic surgery or anything like that. anyone you know knows an agent and can introduce that agent as their friend (and they probably really are friends). 7. about the commission: don't think it's going to be something like $500. It's going to be anywhere from 15-200% of your surgery price, depending on how good/ruthless your agent is and how stupid they estimate you to be. remember, you're probably going to many clinics so they have lots of opportunities to evaluate how much they can squeeze out of you. they will probably get it right by the time you choose a clinic. 8. even if you go with a clinic they can't get commission out of, they will have your personal information forever and can forward it to any clinic and say they're your agent and want a commission. I wrote this for everyone's benefit because I really think people should be smarter about these things. Because I chose to write this I also want to say this to any agents reading this: I know you're making millions from this industry and some of you have some really wealthy/powerful corporations behind you and I've probably just made a lot of you really angry. Please realize that I'm not here to make friends so no matter how many times you try you won't get my name, nationality, phone number, skype, kakao, email or anything like that but I can't stop you from wasting your time. Unlike most people here I actually understand most of you are dangerous people. Greed is a scary thing. Writing this made it impossible for me to ever trust anyone here enough to share any information like that and any information I've shared so far will lead nowhere. I did it for the good of everyone. I'm not sorry for writing this. I want people to know there are no translators that you just find in a forum and that work for $150 / day because they're nice people. I hope people will find this helpful. If you read all this and now feel hopeless: please don't. Knowledge is power. When you know and consider all these things you will be able to avoid more mistakes than and make better decisions than before. I know it seems scary but it's possible to make the right decisions. I wish you get everything you dream of Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
douraimi Posted April 8, 2014 Share Posted April 8, 2014 Thanks!! Really useful information! I wish I can translate that and post it to the Chinese website but I'm pretty sure with a strong attitude against translator like this my post will be immediately deleted by the admin :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k-couture Posted April 9, 2014 Share Posted April 9, 2014 the general rule is do not get a translator from medical tourism agencies or any company that is affiliated with surgical clinics. If you reallllllllly feel you need a translator (and u shouldn't need one at all) then get one from an agency that provides translations to corporate clients. Anyways at the end of the day getting a translator is a blatant waste of your money. Those potential issues which shinyglittery mentioned aside, the most important things to note are the following. a) For navigation, its called google maps. When you arrive at the airport buy a prepaid simcard for ure duration of stay. That way you don't need to top it up, everything is unlimited besides international calls. b) If you stay at a landmark hotel, preferably in gangnam near ure clinic then there are shuttle buses that take u to directly to and from the hotel and the airport. If you are not at a landmark hotel simply get the shuttle bus to the station and from there get a taxi. c) When at the airport go to the help desk and have the staff write down the address of the hotel in korean just in case. When at the hotel get the staff to write down the address of the clinics you will be visiting in korean. Google maps, the address in korean will be your bread and butter when it comes to navigating around the place. Taxis are fairly well priced in Seoul so if on google maps it shows your next location is too far to walk then just hop into on. If you are too stingy to get a taxi then u shouldn't even be having surgery. d) Use google translate for the little things such as buying certain products etc e) Your surgeon, as most surgeons in Korea are proficient in English. Most clinics also have english translators on site to aide the clients. Consultants also speak english. Even more clinics have chinese speaking staff which i imagine would benefit alot of you on the forum. f) if your surgeon is not proficient in english, move on. The last thing you want is someone to translate your needs to a surgeon who doesn't speak english. There is no way to know how objective and not subjective your translator is when interpreting your requirements to the surgeon. Why take that risk because you are too lazy to find another surgeon. There's thousands of them out there and lots of skilled ones who have a strong command of english So basically, unless you are a moron and lacking any independance whatsoever do not waste your time getting a translator. Getting around Seoul is like common sense my dears u shouldn't be having surgery in a foreign country if u can't manage that yourself. xx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felix77 Posted April 9, 2014 Share Posted April 9, 2014 Simple. Learn Korean and you'll be fine without an interpreter. (I think the correct term is 'interpreter', not 'translator' since you don't translate any documents). Learning a foreign language for the sake of your own face (and future life) is indeed worthy...don't you think? Whether it's true or not, I won't put myself at risk. If you think it's safe using their service, go ahead. The choice is yours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doublezz Posted April 9, 2014 Share Posted April 9, 2014 Hi, Has anyone tried o&young clinic before? do they have english speaking nurse that can assist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shinyglittery Posted April 10, 2014 Author Share Posted April 10, 2014 I agree with K Couture, you are taking a huge risk if you go to Korea with the attitude that someone else will take care of everything else. They will but at a price. The price can be money or your face, your future AND your money. In other words: the price might be higher than anyone can afford. Better than asking someone to write down the address of the clinic is this: go to the clinic website, scroll all the way down (use the Korean version). Write down the address yourself. Look for 서울시 = Seoul, 강남구 = gangnam-gu, 동 = dong. The line with numbers and those words is the address. If you're not sure go back to the English website and check where the address is (left, right, top line, bottom line) then look in the same place in the Korean version. This can help most of the time but not always. doublezz: I have no idea, sorry. Hopefully someone will know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tulipfield Posted April 10, 2014 Share Posted April 10, 2014 I don't advise this at all. Korean is a very hard language to learn for most people (excepting Japanese speakers since Japanese has a very similar grammatical structure and vocabulary). There is no way you will go from 0 to enough grammar and vocabulary to comprehend explanations of medical procedures within the kind of time you want to wait before getting surgery. (Remember, "hello" and "thank you" and a knowledge of the alphabet are not going to be sufficient!) Obviously knowing Korean yourself would be ideal, but that is nowhere near feasible for the average PS tourist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k-couture Posted April 10, 2014 Share Posted April 10, 2014 exactly what tulipfield said. I mean for example, i am fluent in mandarin in a conversational level. Lets assume my surgeon only speaks mandarin....i will still have difficulty asking him technical questions concerning muscle sectioning, soft tissue, placement methods etc because i do not know any of the technical terminology. is quite straightforward, ure surgeon should be able to speak english as most in korea do. if not move on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shinyglittery Posted April 10, 2014 Author Share Posted April 10, 2014 that is a good point. then again if you already know a language "on a conversational level" it shouldn't be too difficult, just read a few articles about the procedures you want in that language. it's not so hard to pick up those extra words. unless you learned Mandarin as a foreign language and you didn't know it from childhood. then maybe it's more difficult, I don't know. but if you're Chinese it shouldn't be too difficult. most dialects are based on Mandarin and everyone should know Mandarin since childhood anyway. if you're overseas Chinese and only grew up speaking Hokkien or something then it's different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inu1602 Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 actually most of the clinic in south korea now has a complete set of translator. I don't think you'll need to find one yourself, just go to the clinic, and the in house translator will come out and help you with everything you need. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
douraimi Posted April 12, 2014 Share Posted April 12, 2014 I think learning Korean would make it easier to get around--getting cabs/eating at the restaurant and stuff. I'm planning to do it for this purpose lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ladybugz Posted April 12, 2014 Share Posted April 12, 2014 I found it really hard to get around in Korea without a translator, so I booked a hotel right near the subway station and found a few store clerks who were fluent enough in English to point me to the right direction. It def. saves a lot of money over translators (many of whom have commissions). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbrowneyedgir Posted May 2, 2014 Share Posted May 2, 2014 I 100% agree with everything in this post, especially with the fact that an English proficient surgeon is a must! And yes there are always in house English and mandarin speaking consultants that won't need to make a commission off you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbrowneyedgir Posted May 2, 2014 Share Posted May 2, 2014 Your hotel should have wifi. You should use google maps to look at the nearby area, that helped me lots as google maps shows icons of restaurants or hotels or subway stations. I didn't use a translator at all except google maps and google translate when I was in the hotel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbrowneyedgir Posted May 2, 2014 Share Posted May 2, 2014 Agreed! Why pay for one? Seems unnecessary especially side they only want to make commissions off you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
)
Recommended Posts