[Drama 2011] A Thousand Days' Promise 천일의 약속

[71e]

[71e]

Update Twitter 18/11/11

[TRAN]

What? Did I just see the photo of Jihyung and Seoyeon in her Auntie's house? Jihyung's persisting is paying off?

Already half way through, Jihyung Seoyeon not so much happening yet, we don't get to see happy flash backs anymore, guess the drama will continue with the present time onward.

Does anyone follow the writer's twitter. Has she done with the scrip yet? And do we get the extension or not?

Looks like the weather there is really cold, Soo Ae has seen shivering BTS photos

---

Off topic, the actress playing Mung Hee is also currently in another drama Just You... Multi-tasking? I always wonder these actress get paid? by hours by lines? by screen-time?

[71e]

CR : SooAe Baidu

[Guest kaedejun]

A Thousand Days' Promise is now on Hulu!

http://www.hulu.com/a-thousand-days-promise

[71e]

Thousand Day Promise 천일의 약속 Subtitles by S2 now available !!!

WithS2

[TRAN]

Why did Jihyung text Seoyeon where about himself and what's he up to at the end of episode 10? Isn't kind of out of the blue? Meaning?

[baduy]

Why did Jihyung text Seoyeon where about himself and what's he up to at the end of episode 10? Isn't kind of out of the blue? Meaning?

Indeed it's intially puzzling, and pretty significant, especially in its specific context.

We have just passed the one-hour marker of episode 10 of a drama sketched out to have 20 episodes (even if Santa Claus may have another couple in his sack come December) The editing has gone into fairly rapid intercut mode between apparently very different scenes, which in Kdramas always indicates some sort of bombshell approaching at the imminent cliffhanger.

We've just seen SY's aunt come out of her husband's shop, apparently to complete a routine errand before going home, but then suddenly pausing, with a very troubled look on her face, by a bus stop. All of a sudden, we cut to SY and her team leaving work for the weekend into the fading late autumn sunlight, which is putting gold fringes on what's left of the leaves in the somewhat anemic looking "architectural" trees that punctuate the concrete.

Notice how they instinctively observe due order, even after leaving the office. SY leads the way out in front, the junior member brings up the rear at a respectful distance, having to shout a bit to make herself heard. And what she shouts is her eager expectation of dividing the evening ahead into three "rounds". Round one, dinner. Round two noraebang. And after they've sung for as long as they like, third round, clubbing! After all, they've got the whole weekend ahead of them to recover.

The serious-minded one (who alas, has to be equipped with standard Kdrama issue "I am serious minded" spectacles) says she's getting too old to rave the night away with such young things. She and SY may come along to the noraebang, but after that they'll leave the three youngsters to have their fun for the rest of the night. The solitary male (the team's designer) says she (and by implication SY too) ought to have fun while she still can, otherwise she'll soon be too old for it and regret the chances she's missed. (Like so much of the casual banter to which SY is exposed in the office, these words are an unwitting stab to SY's heart which she can't show.)

The rather stuck-up one says she hopes SY will stay the course with them, but she replies that she'll just eat dinner with them then leave. (As senior in the group, she can do this without giving offence. For a junior member, that wouldn't be an option, no matter how weary they felt. The heirarchical folllow-your-teamleader rules of after-work conduct in Korean companies are as strict as those applied in working hours.)

All the same, the others are genuinely disappointed, and are making cajoling noises to get her to change her mind when her cellphone in her bag chimes an incoming text, though it escapes her attention and she's rather surprised when the junior alerts her to it. The text reads "Had to go to Pyeongtaek on business. [Pyeongtaek, a place which sounds considerably less appealing if you look at the Hanja: 平澤 or "featureless swamp", is around an hour's drive from downtown Seoul and the place to where the US and Korean armed forces combined combat HQ has been relocated, giving rise to much political turbulence and local resentment especially among displaced farmers, but also a demand for upmarket housing with rich pickings for architects like JH] I'll eat dinner out before I come back [literally: "come up": traveling back to central Seoul from anywhere to the South is always viewed as journeying "upwards"] No need to reply"

I translate "come back" because that's all the Korean strictly warrants, but in an English-speaking drama, the message might just have easily read "come home". And that's the essence of the oddity here. JH is texting SY as if he was a hubby routinely letting wifey know he'll be a bit late back to their marital home, so go ahead and eat dinner without him, he'll look after feeding himself. This is part of the same "creating facts" approach that led him to tell SY, then his mother, then Jae Min, that he was going to marry her, and that's that. So she'd better get used to it. "No need to reply" indeed, because he won't take any notice of any refusal.

Before SY can show any visible reaction to this, her junior colleague distracts her by remarking that maybe she ought to go get her hearing checked out. Her cellphone's really loud, but she didn't hear it. Not to worry, SY responds, she can hear things when she wants to. The deeper meaning of this is of course lost on her young chum, who takes her to be saying that the text is from an admirer with whom she's playing hard to get, and wants to know who the sender was. "Someone I'm fond of", she replies with an enigmatic smile, but then qualifies this apparent confession by saying mischievously "that's what you were hoping I'd say, isn't it?", leaving space for the interpretation that she's just saying that to tease her (a faint echo here of the heart-rending earlier incident where SY made a brave show of taking her own condition lightly by pretending to JM that she'd already forgotten that they'd just eaten together.)

The bespectacled one, however, refuses to take it as a tease, and does her own teasing by feigning delight that SY has finally let a little of her secret private life peep through. SY plays along with the game, pretending to be surprised in her turn at that remark "You surely aren't saying I'm the secretive type?" "Gosh, you need to ask? the superior colleague chips in, keeping up the tone. "Just goes to show people never know what they're really like. Laugh of the day: 'What, secretive? Moi?'".

And then we're at the goal of Auntie's journey, watching the ajumma of a downmarket diner swig back the soju while on duty (though she's hardly run off her feet by customers, so she's not exactly neglecting them). So this is where the cliffhanger build-up was leading,..

And we never got to see what SY's reaction to that message would have been had she got it while alone.

This drama is so wonderfully executed in every detail, it makes me want to jump up and down with delight. In fact, heck, my wife's gone out to the supermarket, so I think I will jump up and down a few times. I'll go to a room with a less rickety floor than my study first, though.

[baduy]

Well, I had a nice jump, and in the course of it DramaFever's subs for ep 9 seem to have appeared. They may lead to a little head scratching over the first few lines, so I thought I'd better fill in a bit of background and offer an alternative translation for that bit.

Like the episode 8 before it, ep 9 opens with SY trying to recall and recite a poem, both to exercise her memory and express her mood. Once again, it's a rather well-known anthology piece all highschoolers are expected to commit to memory, and as in the previous episode we come in when she's already past the first lines. This time she also breaks off some way before the end, in the middle of a sentence, which she's struggling to recall, needing to repeat two of its phrases twice, when JM arrives.

As before, the asterisks I've inserted mark the start and finish of what we actually hear, although any subber has the insoluble problem that the whole thing is inevitably present to a Korean-educated listener, or anyone who knows much Korean poetry.

It's called 국화 옆에서, "Beside a Chrysanthemum" and it's by "Midang" -- real name Seo Jeongju (1915-2000), another distinguished 20th Century poet. Though he held strongly traditionalist views, he aligned himself with the Japanese from the mid 1930's, seeing their Empire as a bulwark against decadent Western culture, and during the war he even adopted another, Japanese, penname, and wrote pro-Japanese journalistic pieces, although the tenor of his poetry was always predominantly lyrical and "non-political", strongly imbued with Buddhist spirituality.

After the war, his staunch conservatism endeared him to Korea's military dictators, and for that reason, in conjunction with his earlier pro-Japanese stance, his reputation diminished with the advent of democracy. His literary standing has somewhat improved since his death, (and consequent inability to make political statements) and some regard him as the finest Korean poet of the last century, at least for his earlier works. He even has a Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/SeoJeongju How's that for immortality, eh? Strangely enough, his updates from the beyond seem to be confined to English translations of a handful of his poems, illegally scanned in from printed sources. Not the way to improve one's karma, surely?

The translation below is my own, bashed about even more than is generally necessary with Korean poems to let the lines SY recites come together (as they do in Korean, though a translation not subject to that constraint might read better if it sequenced them differently in English).

국화 옆에서

한 송이 국화꽃을 피우기 위해

봄부터 소쩍새는

그렇게 울었나 보다.

*

한 송이 국화꽃을 피우기 위해

천둥은 먹구름 속에서

또 그렇게 울었나 보다.

그립고 아쉬움에 가슴 조이던

머언 먼 젊음의 뒤안길에서

*

이제는 돌아와 거울 앞에선

내 누님 같이 생긴 꽃이여.

노오란 네 꽃잎이 피려고

간밤엔 무서리가 저리 내리고

내게는 잠도 오지 않았나 보다.

Beside a Chrysanthemum

So one Chrysanthemum can bloom,

A nightingale may have sung

With such sadness ever since Spring.

*

So one Chrysanthemum can bloom,

Maybe through glowering clouds,

Thunder has resounded so mournfully.

Her heart ravaged by absence and by yearning,

Returning from far, far off,

From the distant pathways of her youth,

*

My sister, standing before her mirror

Resembled this flower.

Last night, to bring your yellow petals into bloom,

The early frost may have come down,

While I lay sleepless.

[irilight]

The soundtrack says "pollack". The blowfish is only in the DF subs. (The DSS subs for that episode are still embryonic, but there the line is saved by the Chinese, where the word is much plainer and can't be so easily confused. The second, "eo" syllable in both words is the Sino-Korean 魚 for "fish", but the "bok" component in "blowfish" is a native Korean word that can't be written in Hanja. Although there are several other words, also spelled and pronounced "bok" which are indeed Sino-Korean and each has its own distinct Hanja character, but the underlying words, and hence also the meanings, are completely different from this "fishy" one.

Actually, since my last posting, I came across a Korean recipes page maintained by someone who lives in Korea, but is far from a native speaker, which is supposedly about making pollack soup (or perhaps we should call it "stew", most Korean "soups" are half way to what is called "stew" in Western cuisine). And every time the fish concerned is named (both in Hangeul and romanized form) it's wrongly specified as "blowfish". That's a pretty perilous recipe.

She has a very high, and in my view very well deserved, reputation (at least among people who aren't too intellectually snobbish to take TV drama seriously as a creative form). And she's even older than I am, so there's hope for me yet.

Like a number of other Korean writers of her caliber, she excells at creating characters and situations that engage the skills of actors and actresses and inspire them to new heights. Part of her skill in character creating is her ability to give each and every character, even quite minor ones, a distinctive "voice" in their individual choice of words, their phrasing patterns etc. Alas, a lot of this latter quality is very hard to bring across in translation, and some subbers don't even try, often resulting in rather flat and colorless dialogue which doesn't do the original justice. I sympathize with the subbers. It's extremely difficult to devise and sustain equivalent English patterns under any circumstances, and it's virtually impossible under the commercial pressures (and low managerial expectations) which professional subbers face, and the frantic nagging for subs within hours of the raws emerging that fansubbers have to bear.

The suggestion is yes, it seems she had a silent crush on him since the age of 15, but always regarded him as out of her league (for socio-economic rather than any strictly personal reasons). I suspect there's a lot more backstory to be uncovered there, though.

Back on the subject of language, At the start of Ep 8, SY is exercising her memory (but that's not all she's doing) by reciting a much-loved and anthologized poem by one of Korea's best known 20C poets, Kim Chun Su (1922-2004). It's one of several thousand poems Koreans are expected to know by heart by the time they graduate high school. Its title is simply "Flower" (꽃) and it was first published in 1959.

When the episode starts, SY is already on line 7 of the poem, so we don't hear the first six lines, but here it is in it its entirety.

김춘수 -- 꽃

내가 그의 이름을 불러 주기 전에는

그는 다만

하나의 몸짓에 지나지 않았다.

내가 그의 이름을 불러 주었을 때

그는 나에게로 와서

꽃이 되었다.

내가 그의 이름을 불러 준 것처럼

나의 이 빛깔과 향기에 알맞는

누가 나의 이름을 불러다오.

그에게로 가서 나도

그의 꽃이 되고 싶다.

우리들은 모두

무엇이 되고 싶다.

너는 나에게 나는 너에게

잊혀지지 않는 하나의 의미가 되고 싶다.

The translation in the subs available so far ... well it rather fails to do justice to it. But then, translating Korean poetry into other languages, even ones with more affinities to Korean than English, is a fantastically difficult task. All the same, here's my attempt (starting from the beginning, not from where we come in in the drama. I've put an asterisk at the point where the quoted parts begin)

Flower

Before I called his name

He'd been to me

The merest gesture.

But when I called his name

He came to me

And turned into a flower.

*

Just as I called his name,

So now let someone also call mine,

Evoking my color and fragrance,

So I too may go to him

Becoming in turn his flower.

I wish that all we are

Might meld into just one single thing.

Me for you, you for me,

An unforgettable, indivisible significance.

Looking at the Korean text of line 8, it's interesting that in the original printed edition the poet (or maybe the publisher) thought it appropriate to add the Hanja 香氣 in brackets after the word 향기 (hyang-gi) to confirm that it was meant in the sense of "fragrance, perfume, aroma".

That clarification in the 1959 printing was presumably because 향기 is also the Korean reading of a quite different Sino-Korean word, 鄕妓 in Hanja, which unfortunately means a rural gisaeng (though a more brutally literal rendering of the characters would be "village *****", where ***** is a word the stupid Soompi censor robot won't let me post, but it ryhmes with "sore".) So apparently, half-a-century ago, that possible, highly disruptive, meaning would have been present to readers, so much so that it was felt advisable to keep it at bay by providing the Hanja to back up the actual intended meaning.

It's maybe a sign of how much language awareness has changed that few people, apart from nutters like myself who read historical dictionaries of Chinese characters on the beach, are now aware of this second meaning, and the word 향기 figures all over the place in Kpop lyrics without any danger of misinterpretation nowadays.

Two very recent examples. After School's Shampoo on their Virgin album from this Summer:

샴푸가 되고 싶어

그대의 머리카락에 나 흘러내리며

짙은 나의 향기로 그대를 감싸고 싶어요

I want to turn into shampoo,

Cascading from your hair down your body,

Enveloping you in my musky fragrance

And the second track, Telepathy, of SNSD's current mega-hit album

샤르르 내 입술에 녹은 주문이 (들리니 들리니)

신비로운 향기가 온몸을 감싸 (하늘로 날아 올라)

The murmured magic spell melting on my lips (can you hear, can you hear?)

The mysterious fragrance enveloping my whole body (flying up and away)

But enough of that. Time to get psyched down to today's onslaught of glorious gloom....

Hi everyone, sorry to have been gone.. I have house guests for the holiday, and very little time for myself.. Missed all the wonderful input and gorgeous photos... Thank you

'baduy', I so much appreciate these insights you share with us.. It really gives the drama so much more depth for me...

One of my Korean friends tells me there are so many deep nuances to the writing, and that is a large part why this drama is so popular.. and that these nuances are most likely totally over-looked in translation, and we, foreigners would most likely not understand them anyway.....

OMG!! where am i when this thread was started..?? ahahahahaha...

so happy i found this thread.. i love A Thousand Days' Promise...

 Soo Ae and Kim Rae Won is soo jjang!!!.. can't wait for eps.7&8 to be subbed..

thanks for sharing all the goodies here!!! and oh, it would be great if they'll have an extension!! kyahhhh...

"ilovemyselfmore' , glad you found us and that you love it as much as we all do...

[irilight]

*quoted image*

Update Twitter 18/11/11

*quoted image*

OMG... I think if I walked out in the street where they were filming it, I'd think I have died and went to Heaven....

This drama now available with more subtitles.

A Thousand Days Promise with Indonesian subtitles on Island Fansulos

A Thousand Days Promise with Spanish subtitles on YouTube

[Guest seproast]

Episode 09 English Sub

http://www.mediafire.com/?andzk72qoxcw53d

[little tiger]

Episode 09 English Sub

http://www.mediafire.com/?andzk72qoxcw53d

thanks for this!

[baduy]

There's another fragment, later in ep 9, of a poem many Koreans encounter in high school. This time SY, having flung herself wearily on her bed, recites it with complete fluency after she's dismayed her brother by taking a huge swig of the medically forbidden wine in a desperate attempt to get to sleep.

But this one isn't actually a Korean poem at all. It's a translation of a poem by the Austro-Bohemian Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) whose allusive style and evocation of isolated intense moments influenced many Korean poets in the first half of the 20C including both the poets whose work has already figured in this drama. But that allusive style, which translates into Korean rather better than into English, was in his more mature poems, and this ain't one of them. It's from his collection of earliest works, somewhat unimaginatively titled Erste Gedichte (First Poems), not published till 1913 but mainly actually written a decade and more earlier, before he found his own poetic voice. It's the first of a sequence of 22 short verses collectively entitled Lieben (Loving). It has no title in itself apart from the Roman numeral I, though in Korean anthologies the translation carries the first line as its title.

The two three-line stanzas are meant to be a question and answer.

Here they are in the German original

Und wie mag die Liebe dir kommen sein?

Kam sie wie ein Sonnen, ein Blütenschein?

Kam sie wie ein Beten? Erzähle!

Ein Glück löste leuchtend vom Himmel sich los

Und hing mit gefalteten Schwingen groß

An meiner blühenden Seele.

Or, in my translation, which attempts to keep some of the overblown bombast of the original.

And love, say, how did it come to you?

Like a sunray's gleam or a shower of blossoms?

Like a prayer? Tell me, do!

Down from Heaven swept resplendent bliss

And clung, immense, with folded wings,

To my blossoming soul.

But the translation printed in Korean school anthologies hides some of the bombastic excess (maybe the translator was shielded by not realizing how painfully arch and phoney the German is)

SY recites only the first stanza, the question, not the answer.

사랑이 어떻게 너에게 왔는가

햇빛처럼 꽃보라처럼

또는 기도처럼 왔는가

If I now translate the Korean, ignoring the German, the lines SY says on screen come out something like

What was the way love came to you?

Like the sun? Like windblown blossoms?

Or was it like a prayer that it came?

For completeness' sake, here's the Korean translation of the second, reply, stanza, which SY doesn't recite.

행복이 반짝이며 하늘에서 내려와

날개를 거두고

꽃피는 나의 가슴에 걸려온 것은

Resplendent happiness swept down from Heaven,

And folded its wings

Clinging to my blossoming soul.

Luckily, SY seems to fall into the sleep she was craving for before getting to that bit.

[Guest jdkk09]

I appreciated the job Park Yoo Hwan is doing as Moon Kwon.  His acting is so convincing to me, that I forget he's acting sometimes.  Great job for a newbie!

[71e]

Kim Rae Won and Soo Ae In Love Rumor as They Hold Hand

The SBS’s “Good Morning” program hosted by Bae Ki Wan, Choi Young Ah, and Jo Hyung Ki aired on November 17th, 2011, had brought viewers to the behind the scene filming venue of the A Thousand Days’ Promise starring Kim Rae Won and Soo Ae.

During the shooting on the day, after Soo Ae forgot her dialog lines and caused the NG, she smiled coquettishly, and the atmosphere on the spot was harmonious and warm. In order to memorize the lines, Soo Ae started to concentrate and her hair was messed a little bit, Kim Rae Won naturally helped her to tidy up the hair.

Later, Soo Ae lost her balance when her assistant was adjusting her long pant and shoe, and the Kim Rae Won who stood at least three persons away rushed to grab and hold firmly her right hand, showing gentlemanliness. After a while, Soo Ae still did not let go of her hand, showing that their relationship is not usual. This has also caused the speculation that both of them may already in love relationship.

This seemed to the the warm continuation of the drama series, where Kim Rae Won broke off an engagement to stay beside Soo Ae, but Soo Ae did not want to encumber Kim Rae Won after sickness.

Actually, during the production press conference held on October 11th, 2011, Soo Ae had expressed that she felt good when together with Kim Rae Won, and that she felt he is true and honest, clearly revealed the good feeling early on. Currently the show is the champion in the ratings for the time slot, and if coupled with both of them gets together, it will be double happiness for both of them.

DramaAsian

[71e]

OMG This is so interesting

preview for today episode

[Guest Fidelity]

OMG This is so interesting

preview for today episode

Gahh, thanks for posting!

Translation:

JH's mom: Don't waste time. Do everything that you can, [she's ?? - *I can't hear this part* -] your everything.

HG: To follow around [JH]oppa, I put 5 years of effort...

HG's mom: After getting that kind of treatment, you still want to call him oppa?!

JH: Please, SY, let me into your life. You just need to be my woman.

SY: Just until I disappear...

JH: You won't disappear.

SY: Oppa, yesterday, I remembered his phone number.

JM: How...?

JM: You are sure?

* Cut to SY crying in the car

[TRAN]

Thanks baduy for all your translations! You think the writer wants to tell us something? Getting Seoyeon citing all these poems? I get Jihyung is now so stubborn and will do things his way and only. And maybe that the only way to get any response from Seoyeon. Interesting point about how Koreans do business. I've always thought after work hour is your own, and you shouldn't mix business and personal together? How about Japanese culture? Same?

So what do you guys think how this drama will end? I have feeling that it will end just before Seoyeon loses herself completely. And during that time how I wish we could have some funny moment where she just forgot what she just did. Wouldn't it be fun?

Regarding the clip on the morning show when Rae Won lend his hand to Soo Ae, you can notice the way guy holding the scrip was smiling when looking both at Soo Ae and Rae Won? what was he thinking I wonder?

Hi 71e, I've been waiting for your sub, don't you want to continue posting them? I know WithS2 is subbing it. But you know we can't wait that long, and we want to watch it on TV, not PC.. hihi... How about we watch this now with Dramafever's subs, then watch it again when WithS2 completes the sub?

Big Thanks seproast for the sub 9, already downloaded!

Will you guys watching live tonight? 3 more hours to go!

[71e]

Thanks baduy for all your translations! You think the writer wants to tell us something? Getting Seoyeon citing all these poems? I get Jihyung is now so stubborn and will do things his way and only. And maybe that the only way to get any response from Seoyeon. Interesting point about how Koreans do business. I've always thought after work hour is your own, and you shouldn't mix business and personal together? How about Japanese culture? Same?

So what do you guys think how this drama will end? I have feeling that it will end just before Seoyeon loses herself completely. And during that time how I wish we could have some funny moment where she just forgot what she just did. Wouldn't it be fun?

Regarding the clip on the morning show when Rae Won lend his hand to Soo Ae, you can notice the way guy holding the scrip was smiling when looking both at Soo Ae and Rae Won? what was he thinking I wonder?

Hi 71e, I've been waiting for your sub, don't you want to continue posting them? I know WithS2 is subbing it. But you know we can't wait that long, and we want to watch it on TV, not PC.. hihi... How about we watch this now with Dramafever's subs, then watch it again when WithS2 completes the sub?

Big Thanks seproast for the sub 9, already downloaded!

Will you guys watching live tonight? 3 more hours to go!

sorry i've been busy this week,and i have a problem for sub episode 10, dramafever has block the episode 10 to become premium user