At 09:35 AM 4 September 2002 -0400, kilopascal wrote: > >From the very statement, ....."that one is to imagine"..., it is obvious >that the British author changed the original Japanese/Korean unit to that of >British more or less to illustrate a point rather than to be exact in >translation. The British reading public would not have a concept of a Ri, >so the mile was substituted. Thus, I see no implication here that the >author was intending to fool his readership into thinking the Koreans used >British miles.
Given that the original Korean may have used the Ri, it is unfortunate that the author choose to say "exactly one mile." The precision is clearly not called for in the myth, and substituting a different unit of different size makes the "exactly" pretty superfluous. Nonetheless, I agree that he was not intending to fool his readership. Jim Elwell
