@moonandstars
The example was just off my head, but I’ve seen many sentences like this, and even stranger than this.
In case that that the actor points at the person he wants to protect (and it doesn’t happen often), I would compromise like this.
- This person…
- I will do my best to protect her.
As if it were two different sentences, as if the speaker was trying to put his thoughs and feelings in order, so he tentatively said one thing and then the second sentence was not a continuation of the first, but a different one, started differently.
Yes, those few viewers who do understand a bit of Korean would be surprised if one changed the order completely. So what? They would probably infer that Korean has a different word order. You cannot write syntactically wrong English. If it’s wrong it’s just wrong.
As the victim saying to the murderer “Save me!” In English you don’t say “save me” to the person who is attacking you. You can say “Have mercy” or “Spare me” but not “save me” because how can he save you from himself? I am guessing that it’s a Korean expression, but in English it makes no sense. And yet editors are leaving it, I find it all the time.
Same for “where are you sick?” This does not exist in English. It is most probably a Korean expression which is translated word-by-word.
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/where-do-you-does-it-are-you-hurt.2940718/
Editors are also leaving “I will go first”, “I will leave first” which doesn’t mean anything in English either - unless there is a very narrow door, and there is indecision on who will pass first.
But with these we are more lenient, as they give a flavour of the culture, just as “you have worked hard”, “I have come”, “Have you come?” (when the person is in full view, so obviously she has come), “I will eat well”, “Please eat a lot”, “Thanks for the food”.
Let’s say that these are quaint and we have accepted them already.
What is unacceptable, however, is the use of “pervert”. It is used in a completely different sense, for a perfectly regular guy who has some sexual thoughts, or is looking at a woman’s legs or breasts or something, something which in no way can be described as a perversion (we would say “sex-obsessed” and still it would be an exaggeration).
Is it possible that for Koreans a person looking admiringly at a woman’s legs and one who likes doing the weirdest things in bed (I’m not offering any examples here!) are one and the same and thus there is only one word for both? I have no idea, I leave it to the more knowledgeable people here to elucidate it for us. But international audiences reading this are left scratching their heads, so even if it’s only one word, for once fidelity should be abandoned in the name of common sense.
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