Saturday, February 02, 2008

보고 싶어

To translate "사랑합니다" into English and Chinese is easy. In English, it is "I love you" and in Chinese, it is "我爱你". But what about "보고 싶어", an indirect expression of affection?

To say, "I want to see you" or "我要看你" will not get anyone who understand English or Chinese to think of the direct translation as something related to the heart. To get the nuance right, a better translation will be "I miss you" and "我想你" (I think about you).

This is where it starts to get interesting. When it comes to direct expression of love, there is equivalent in English, Chinese and Korean language. The difference shows when it comes to indirect expression.

English uses "I miss you" to express a sense of noticeable absence of someone.
Chinese uses "我想你" to express a sense of someone's importance in one's mind.
Korean uses "보고 싶어" to express a sense of desire or urge to see someone.

All these expressions are effects of loving someone and which direct expression like "I love you" does not express well. Perhaps the details of love can be seen better through a combination of the three languages - I miss you... 所以我想你... 그래서 보고 싶어...


7 comments:

  1. 마지막 말은 되게 아름다워... *^^*

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  2. Which digital camera are you using? The photo quality is fantastic. *^^*

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  3. uptownham, the camera that took this picture was sanyo xacti. i think it is obsolete now.

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  4. obsolete??? thought about selling it on Ebay??? I just looked it up, and it's selling for $300 USD... :P

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  5. No, it is not that good afterall. Photos taken by this camera are quite pixelated at high resolution. I wouldn't pay even $100 USD for this camera now. I think you are better off buying something else.

    By the way, only the photo in this posting is taken by sanyo xacti as well many of my earlier photos. The recent photos you see in my blog are mostly taken by Pentax DSLR K100D Super.

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  6. I'm glad I found your blog. I just googled 보고싶어 to see the meaning. My bf wrote it to me and google translate sucks. Thanks for explaining it!

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  7. awesome!!
    ur blog is suit for chinese or everyone who speaks English and learning korean!!!

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