OK let me explain these two sentences. They are not at all the worst I’ve come across, just the ones on an episode I was working on while writing the post.
Sentence 1:
Context:
In the previous subtitles the girl asks the boy: “Why is it so hard to be close?” or something like that.
And he replies citing the various reasons, which all have to do with him. Although he loves her, thinking that he would never have a chance with her, he has created many walls which now make their lives difficult. So she says:
“Because of the numerous obstacles you’ve created, it’s hard to get over them.”
The awkwardness is that the object of the sentence (them) is also the object of the secondary sentence (obstacles) which comes first. You would expect that once the obstacles mentioned in the first sentence, the object of the second sentence would be something else, rather than referring to the obstacles again by the word “them”. The second sentence is kind of reduntant.
It’s very difficult to explain why it is awkward, unnatural.
Alternative ways of saying this:
“That’s why (it’s hard), because of the numerous obstacles you’ve created”
“It is because of the numerous obstacles you’ve created that it’s hard for us to be a real couple”.
“You have created so many obstacles that now it’s hard to get over them.”
And he replies with another slightly awkward sentence:
They are not the obstacles, it is me.
Meaning: These things are not the obstacles, I am the obstacle.
Second sentence:
Whenever I go to Seoul, of all the words we’ve spoken,
I only see your smiling face.
Yes, the context is exactly what you guessed. But it’s wrong anyway.
When you say "of all [THESE THINGS] I only remember [THESE], you expect both to belong to the same category, because from a large quantity of things the person chooses a few or only one.
From all the apples you gave me, I ate only this one.
You cannot say
“from all the apples you gave me, I only ate a pear”.
Of all the words… I see your face. A face is not part of the words. It is the opposite of words.
The words, the half-truths about a hurtful past, the words which spoke of problems, of why they couldn’t be together, all these things did not register because for her the important part is his smiling face, his affectionate glance, his passionate love.
We could maybe say
Whenever I go to Seoul, of all the words we said, and everything that happened, I remember nothing else than your smiling face.
Of course it’s a bit long, so I would try to make it shorter.
Whenever I go to Seoul, I don’t remember all the words we said. I only see your smiling face.
Other examples:
A long, long time ago, a man called Legendary Go Nan Gil lived.
