# 아쉽다.



## seank

I've found this website today and read some questions and answers. I'm very impressed with some people's answers. Very enthusiastic and fantastic!
As a native Korean speaker and still learning English person, it's very interesting to see and compare the difference between the two languages and the cultures.
On top of that my wife is completely opposite from me. For she's an 'White woman' as we Korean say.

Now I had few Korean expressions that I found very hard to explain in English.
managed to explain to her but I want to hear from you guys' version of saying.

* 아쉽다.
i.g.
1. 라면맛은 좋은데 김치가 없어서 아쉽다.
2. 그 사람이 없어 아쉬운 마음을 달랠길이 없다.

Translating those examples is not that hard. Because if you know the meaning of it you can just twist a bit and find similar english expressions. But for non-Korean speaking people they need to know the meaning of it to use in practical situations. 

What would you say?


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## 조금만

Welcome aboard!!  Especially when bringing such an interesting question, which truly is a challenge!

My take on this little problem....

As you say, it's generally fairly easy to explain in English what sense 아쉽다 bears in a given context, but only if we are at liberty to write a mini-essay and add a slew of footnotes. Matching it with a single English word is a lot tougher. And certainly no one single English word will do in all contexts (the suggested translation "inconvenient" which many dictionaries come up with is particularly unserviceable)

For any readers who haven't encountered this word, or who have, but haven't hit the problems of translating it: it's employed to characterize a state which is felt to be in some sense less good that it ought to be, where something eminently desirable is missing. Not always a state that's necessarily bad in itself, but it _feels_ bad because you're aware of that missing something or someone, and sense that if only it or they were not missing, things would be a whole lot better. Or, from a different angle, the awareness of something or someone being missing makes what might otherwise be an essentially tolerable or even pleasant state hard to bear.

Often the best thing a translator can do is take a deep breath and then forget about trying to find a direct equivalent altogether. I'll pick up your second challenge sentence, since I'm sadly not a fan of kimchi (or instant noodles for that matter). I'd be inclined to tackle your example #2 along the lines of

[When/Since] (s)he's not around, [I'm /[s]he's] at a loss and can't be consoled.

There I've allowed not only 아쉽다 apparently to disappear, but to drag 마음 with it into seeming invisibility. Adnominal+nominal have become "be at a loss", with the noun 마음 suppressed.

Koreans often feel very uneasy about "losing" nouns in this way, but it's important to realise that noun-disappearance is often required because the noun was actually there simply to hang the adjective on, for the simple reason that in Korean, adjectives have either to be full final-position predicates or adnominals firmly attached to their noun, whereas their English equivalents can float around more self-sufficiently. Very frequently Korean has "emotional state + heart/mind/soul etc" where the idiomatic English equivalent is just the emotional state, without the metaphorical organ that houses it and pins it into the syntax. 

This is somewhat similar to the abundance of "things" and "people" in Korean sentences, where the 것 or 사람 are there to hang an adjective or adjectival phrase on to which can't stand alone in Korean, but can, and sometimes must, do so in English.

I hope you won't mind my pointing out an example in your own posting above. You write "As a native Korean speaker and still learning English person..." Anyone who knows some Korean will fully understand why you wrote "person': there, because from the perspective of Korean syntax it feels as though "stlill learning English" needs to be attached to a noun of its own. But in English the word "person" is here not merely redundant, but it actually produces a phrase unacceptable (though perfectly comprehensible) to an English native speaker. You might instead say just "As a native Korean speaker still learning English, ..."

Here's one of my own favourite examples of the trickiness of 아쉽다, from a well-known weepy TV drama, 봄의 왈츠 (Spring Walz). We are in the middle of the twenty-odd episodes, at the point where our Long Lost Childhood Sweethearts have just recognized each other and are enjoying two minutes of hand-holding before Cruel Fate Starts to Intervene. The challenging word appears twice, in a way whose sense is highly germane to this situation, first in a stage direction, then in the dialogue.


*손잡고 김밥집이 보이는 길을 걸어가는 재하와 은영, 아쉬운 두 사람*.

재하:  아쉽다.
은영:  (보는)
재하:  얼마 걷지도 않았는데 벌써 헤어지네.

Let's skip the stage direction for a moment, and tackle the dialogue.

Jaeha: XXXXXX
Eunyeong: (_A quizzical look_)
Jaeha: We've only walked a little way together, and it's already time go our separate ways.

I'm not seriously proposing XXXXXX as a translation for 아쉽다 here. But if I were actually translating this drama for performance, I'd propose substituting a wordless sigh. The sigh provokes the questioning look, whereupon the sigh-utterer tells us very plainly what the sigh (and the Korean word present in the original) actually meant. I'd be at a loss to find any single English word or short expression that got the meaning across better than that sigh could. I certainly wouldn't settle for the subtitler's "How inconvenient" [!!]

That still leaves the problem of how to translate the stage direction, of course.

Jaeha and Eunyeoung walking hand in hand along the street with the kimbap restaurant in the background, both of them XXXXXX

Er no... So more courage is called for. We don't really need to translate 두 사람 at all, for the reasons I've already indicated: it's just there as an attachment point for 아쉽다. But having jetisonned two Korean words, I'm going to have the audacity to bring in no no less than five English ones for the Korean term that's exercising us....

J_aeha and Eunyeoung, walking hand in hand along the street with the kimbap restaurant in the background, their happiness tinged with melancholy._

OK, I'm being deliberately provocative here by, in one and the same context, replacing a single Korean word first with a whole phrase, then by a wordless noise. Not everyone would be happy with such extremes. But when moving between two such very different languages -- syntactically as well as culturally different -- there is often no alternative to using the words of the source language to feel our way into the situation, then letting go of those words altogether and reaching out from our grasp of what lies behind them to locate whatever words -- or noises -- will transfer that underlying sense into appropriate formulations in the target language.


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## stillwater

For the first sentence, I would say,

"The ramyon tastes good, but something is missing--Kimchi!"

For the second sentence, how about,

"My heard finds no consolation because of his absence."


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## seank

You are LEGEND, ‘조금만’! Awesome, Soooo awesome! And I appreciate correcting my English too.

As I’ve mentioned I’m still learning. So I'm not afraid of making mistakes and certainly don’t mind someone correcting my English. Especially place like this, who care who I am and what my English level is. That’s what I like about this site. Now I have not only replies from people like you about my challenge but also free writing lesson as well.  We Koreans have an idiom for this situation. 일석이조. Literally it means ‘One stone, Two birds.’ And it means ‘By throwing one stone I’ve got two birds.’

And Good work for ‘Stillwater’. As I mentioned there are many ways to express similar message in English.  Such as ‘라면 is ok(or tasty) but it would have been (much)better eating with 김치.’ 
And for the second one, it was very amazing insight from ‘조금만’. That is totally true that in Korean nouns such as 것 or  마음 must be there for their adjective words to be added on. That’s one of differences between English and Korean. I haven’t thought about that actually. Very excellent point!

But the actual meaning of the sentence seems to be a bit over translated. Because I put this sentence out of nowhere, it doesn’t have context or situation at all. But Korean people might have common understandings that mutually agree and not really argue about from the sentence.
I’ve noticed that ‘Stillwater’ put ‘his absence’ rather than ‘his/her absence’. ‘ 그 사람’ theoretically can be anyone, male or female for it can be translated as ‘the person’ in English . But normally it’s used for male rather than female in Korean. ‘그 남자’  would be clearer but ‘그 사람’ for a man is very common. For female we say ‘그녀’. But then again that’s not an absolute rule at all for in some case Korean can use 그 사람 for woman. But the sentence that I gave is much more appropriate for a man to be ‘그 사람’. 

Now let’s guess who is really feeling ‘아쉽다.’ in the sentence. Well, of course, there is no definite answer to it.  But I’m going to give a few choices. 

A.	a woman who loves and misses그 사람.
B.	Just anyone who doesn’t have love relationship.

I’m thinking you are starting to realise what I’m coming from by now.  If A is correct then ‘at a loss and can’t be consoled’ is appropriate emotional state from an absent of the loved one. But ‘아쉽다.’ is a bit less than that. Like 라면 and 김치, it’s ok to eat 라면 without 김치. It’s just an option that can make the whole eating experience better yet not really necessary thing. You know what I mean?

So it more likely person like B could have feel 아쉽다 from an absent of a man that he/she knows.
Maybe a boss is thinking and missing his/her very capable employee that could have managed an event a lot better than what already happened and disappointing but he has moved on to a different job or place.  Something like that! 

Maybe ‘달랠 길 없다.’ gives you wrong impression to think that this sentence is about love relationship stuff.
Yes , ‘달래다’ means ‘console’ and ‘길 없다’ means ‘there is no way’. So it can mean ‘there is no way to console.’ So it’s easy to think that ‘there is no way to console the 아쉬운 마음’. But the problem here is ‘달래다’ and ‘console’. ‘console’ gives an impression (to me) that normally objective word for the verb ‘console’ should be a person in distress rather than a distressed heart while ‘달래다’  can have 사람을 or 마음을. For example 물로 배고픔을 달랬다. ( I drank water to ease the hunger.) Here 달래다 can be ‘ease something’ rather than ‘console something’. It’s possible in a poem but not in the normal context.
So literally ‘아쉬운 마음 달랠 길 없다’ can be ‘there is no way to ease the 아쉬운 마음 (which is not from love relationship)’.
Am I making this too complicated?

Honestly I can’t think of really good direct translation for the second sentence except twisting it around and changing it a bit. But that wasn’t my purpose anyway.

Now I have a suggestion about  the example from 봄의 왈츠. Want to hear a feedback from you whether it’s good or not. Translating a play or a drama is totally foreign thing for me so it was “Ah~” factor when I saw it can be just transformed into a mere sigh.
But how about, just saying ‘Well~’ with some sort of hesitating manner? Or ‘This is it!’ with shrugging motion? 
They are totally western version but still convey the same message to enlglish speaking people. The feeling from them is still 아쉽지만….


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## Anais Ninn

Awesome thread!
I am up for the challenge.

1. 라면맛은 좋은데 김치가 없어서 아쉽다.
The ramen is delicious but I wish we had kimchi, too.

2. 그 사람이 없어 아쉬운 마음을 달랠길이 없다.
It's not the same without him/her around.

I am a believer of literal translation when possible yet I admit that it wouldn't always work, especially the source and the target languages are linguistically distant like Korean and English. In such cases, I would like to imagine the situation and fill in the blank in the target language. The same method was employed for the challenges here. 

Anais


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## weisen1984

1. 라면맛은 좋은데 김치가 없어서 아쉽다.
rameon tastes good but its such a pitty that there is no kimchi 
2. 그 사람이 없어 아쉬운 마음을 달랠길이 없다.
i cant help myself to control my mind without him.


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