# Bow Wow Translator

https://minguhongmfg.com/en/products/bow-wow-translator

Date: 2024-05-08

A gift for readers of Bob Gill’s *Dogs Are Just Like Us*.

---

## Translator’s Note

*Dogs Are Just Like Us* is Bob Gill’s second picture book published in Korean by Bois Forêt, following *What Colour is Your World?* in 2023. The original was published in 2018 by Corraini Edizioni, an Italian publisher and art gallery. Since opening in 1973, Corraini Edizioni has spent half a century exploring visual languages in which art and publishing interact through experimental workshops with artists. Among its beautiful results, the collaborations with Bruno Munari—a designer and picture-book author I like as much as Bob Gill—are particularly striking.

In this book, Bob Gill explores dogs and humans through unadorned stories and free-spirited illustrations. “Dogs are just like us.” They express feelings such as sadness and joy, and even behave like humans. But what Gill emphasizes is simply their pure and good hearts. Unlike humans, who make mistakes because they cannot control their desires and repeatedly replace one mistake with another, “dogs don’t go to war with other dogs.” Even without considering that Gill, born in the United States in 1931, belonged to the Silent Generation that experienced the Great Depression of 1929–39 and especially the Second World War of 1939–45 in childhood, the matter-of-fact sentence ending the book affirms perhaps the most important values that endless wars endlessly prove: life and peace. It gives us an opportunity to look again not only at our furry, four-legged friends but at ourselves, and at humanity.

Meanwhile, researchers at Eötvös Loránd University and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences have been studying various ways dogs and humans might communicate since 1994. “Scientists sometimes stay up all night trying to figure out how the world works.” Their findings include the distinct feelings expressed through the duration and pitch of barking, dogs’ greater sensitivity to women’s voices than men’s, and the fact that their occasional head tilts are part of understanding human speech. Of course, natural conversation between dogs and humans may lie in the distant future, but with today’s rapidly advancing AI and big-data technologies, understanding not just dogs’ feelings but even their thoughts may not be absurd. “Um… the weather’s nice today. Shall we go for a walk? We could stop by the flower garden on the way back.” Or, “About the food you gave me yesterday… how about changing it? It was a little bland for my taste.”

Though not a dog, I too have a treasured animal family member: Jojo, a cat who has lived with us since around the autumn of 2016. “Jojo” repeats my wife’s surname twice. As a child, I also kept dogs and rabbits in my parents’ garden, but Jojo, whom I met by chance near our home, is a little more special to me. At first, I tried hard to monopolize Jojo’s attention, bringing armfuls of presents I thought would be liked, or even approaching uninvited for kisses and hugs. In my own way, I thought this was how to understand and love Jojo. Of course, the response was usually indifference or something entirely different from what I had hoped, and I often felt dejected. As I keep discovering, relationships do not go as one wishes. But now, after more than eight years together, any of that is fine. On weekends, merely hearing Jojo lap water in the living room is enough to make me content. Like the jingle in a snack commercial, we know without saying anything that we are already in each other’s hearts. As I write this, Jojo has climbed onto my thigh and is roaming the land of dreams. Of course, there will be no war there either.

April 2024

Min Guhong

- [https://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=338759257](https://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ItemId=338759257)
- [k042930609_bl.jpg](https://minguhongmfg.com/media/pages/products/bow-wow-translator/8d36f48b60-1791638866/k042930609_bl.jpg)
- [k042930609_fl.jpg](https://minguhongmfg.com/media/pages/products/bow-wow-translator/1a1996c535-1791638866/k042930609_fl.jpg)
- [safari-screenshot-2025-05-28-10.15.46.png](https://minguhongmfg.com/media/pages/products/bow-wow-translator/312750e389-1791638867/safari-screenshot-2025-05-28-10.15.46.png)
- [safari-screenshot-2025-05-28-10.16.03.png](https://minguhongmfg.com/media/pages/products/bow-wow-translator/3023a791a9-1791638867/safari-screenshot-2025-05-28-10.16.03.png)
- [safari-screenshot-2025-05-28-10.16.09.png](https://minguhongmfg.com/media/pages/products/bow-wow-translator/d0fb358bc3-1791638868/safari-screenshot-2025-05-28-10.16.09.png)
- [safari-screenshot-2025-05-28-10.16.22.png](https://minguhongmfg.com/media/pages/products/bow-wow-translator/c6aa2b1d99-1791638869/safari-screenshot-2025-05-28-10.16.22.png)