辛苦你了 (xīnkǔ nǐle) / i see you

I started The Character Project as an attempt to translate the untranslatable. Those unique words and phrases in a language that cannot be translated easily or completely, perhaps. Words that got lost in translation. 

Take the direct translation for 辛苦你了 (xīnkǔ nǐle). People usually say this to acknowledge someone’s work. Google Translate suggests this meaning to be “thanks a lot.” 

And this is where Google Translate falls short. 

辛苦你了 (xīnkǔ nǐle) means so much more than that. It recognizes the labor, time, care and attention someone puts into their work. A more sincere translation is, “thank you, I deeply appreciate it.” However, even with the added context, that translation still feels like it’s missing something.

辛苦你了 (xīnkǔ nǐle) is a phrase that simply cannot be translated into English.

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As Olivier Magny puts it so elegantly,

“I love these words that just can’t be translated from language to language. They seem dignified, grounded, battling against the imperialism of reality.”

To me, 辛苦你了 (xīnkǔ nǐle) is more than just a thank you.

It’s acknowledging someone’s effort in doing something laborious and difficult. After all, when deconstructed, 辛苦你了 (xīnkǔ nǐle) is comprised of the following:

辛 (xīn) = labor, difficulty, suffering, hardship
苦 (kǔ) = hardship, pain, suffering (again)
你 (nǐ) = you

The ancient, original meaning of the character “辛 (xīn)” is the sharp blade of a sickle, used to cut crops. Cutting is a painful, back-breaking work.

It requires long hours toiling in rice fields hunched under the broiling sun, ankle deep in water. Workers have to stoop in this repetitive motion, cutting rice stalks close to the plant’s root in small bunches before gathering them together into larger bundles.

All for tiny grains of rice.

Thus, with the development of language, 辛 (xīn)” acquired meanings such as "labor and hardship."

As for 苦 (kǔ), the original meaning is a kind of ancient (古) grass (艹) that is bitter. It then became the adjective to mean "bitter" and gradually acquired the meaning of hardship and suffering, as a noun.

Together, 辛苦 is often translated to mean laborious; hard; miserable; exhausting; arduous.

So when you add the character “you (你)” after “arduous labor (辛苦)” why does it turn into this bastardization of… thank you?

There is an element of gratitude — an evolution of the feeling and experience that is missing from this translation when reduced to a mere “thank you.” It doesn’t recognize the person’s effort or the pain, suffering, and sacrifice that comes with back-breaking labor.

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I see myself grasping for an English equivalent for this word whenever I see my husband look up from his computer after a long day of work.

When it’s so late that his eyes are glazed over and bloodshot from squinting too long at the screen — lips chapped because he forgot to drink water, sitting in darkness, oblivious to the setting sun hours earlier. I hear it when he stretches and sighs — deep, weary sighs that come from the bones. His half-eaten dinner lays untouched by his desk, cold.

It’s in those moments that I feel the phrase rise in my throat. 

I desperately wish he could understand what I want to communicate. Its moments like these that a wave of sadness hits me, when he cannot understand this phrase bursting from within me. I know he wouldn’t be able to understand if I say “辛苦你了.” Yet, the English translation also falls short.

And so, I decide to say nothing.

I wonder if a word, phrase, or entire paragraph could convey the meaning of what this phrase truly means.

“辛苦你了，husband.”

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I also saw it in the stubble and bloodshot eyes of my Ba, my dad, when he arrived home exhausted after taking an eight-hour bus ride back from the factory. I saw it in the heavy way he dropped his backpack to the ground and collapsed — full force, onto the couch, his clothes reeking of cigarette smoke. 

“辛苦你了, Ba.” 

And I see it now on my WeChat screen. As my Ba video calls me from China, where he lives in Jiangxi for months at a time to take care of my grandmother, who was recently paralyzed by a stroke. 

As I wait for his messages to come through, I’m reminded by the endless labor he invests in his family. I see it in his decision, as the only son, to temporarily move back to my grandmother’s small, rural village barely equipped with internet and adequate heating.

To care for her, cook for her, read to her, carry her up and down four flights of stairs — all so she can sit outside and breathe the fresh, mountain air.

“幸苦你了，Ba.”

I tell him through my phone screen. My eyes well with tears as he tells me about his days, his eyes crinkled in a smile despite the hardships he faces, alone. I blink hard to keep my tears from spilling.

He pauses. I feel his gaze shift as he looks up from the phone. I know he’s checking on my grandma. “Be strong,” he whispers in English to me, so as to not wake my Chinese-speaking grandma in the other room, as he pauses to wipe his eyes. 

He understands.
My tears spill over. I wipe my eyes too.

It’s in these moments, for my dad, and for my husband, who is Korean and does not understand Chinese, that I long for words that convey what the true meaning evokes.

“Thank you, you’ve worked hard,” is not enough.

Because 辛苦你了 means more than just, “thank you.”

It means, “I see you.”

My dad and grandma, out for a breath of fresh air on a beautiful day of 蓝天白云