Practical English Episode A-22 悔しい

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 production bases. Some were from Europe, America, Asia-Pacific and Africa. It was really multi-cultural.

Then the Japanese supervisor who also happened to be my immediate boss wanted those people to write 反省report for their project.

Then I realized that there is no such thing in their world and had a hard time explaining what the boss was expecting from them. But really it was hell difficult for them to understand each other and they ended up rewriting reports many times as the boss wasn't happy with their 反省 reports.

Isn't interesting to learn these sorts of cultural difference?

Anyway, how can we express our "悔しい" in other ways?

I could have done better.　

もっとうまくやれたはずなのに

これは自分自身がしたことに対して感じる悔しい気持ちに限られるかと思います。主語が自分以外になると、ちょっとその人を責めているように聞こえてしまうので気を付けましょう。

I'm so upset/disappointed.

残念です

「悔しい」感情がまるまる表現できるとは思いませんが、それに近い気持ちは通じるかと思います。frustrated や mad と訳すこともあるようですが、日本人のいいたい「悔しい」気持ちって激しく表に出すような感情ではないと思うので私的にはしっくりきません。

ということで英語には「悔しい」はない！が結論です！