Nanalingual

悔しいです Have you been watching the World cup soccer games?  I was talking to one of the students about the game of Japan against Croatia on the other day. When I asked him how he felt about the result, he went "I feel 悔しい but how do you say that in English?". The moment he asked me the question, I knew there wouldn't be any exact word for it because there is something off the top of my head whenever I get this sort of questions. So I told him that I guess native English speakers never feel in that way. So no expression exists. Then I said I would say something like "I feel sorry for them considering all the efforts they have put." 悔しい in this context means empathy for the Japanese team who dedicated themselves for every match as well as hard trainings to beat their rivals. I actually had a similar experience when I was working as an interperter in a Japanese company. We had a whole bunch of people joining a course of three-month trainings from their foreign produc