help with this sentence

[han]

Can someone help me with this sentence: 情绪上的悲伤.

Are there idioms in that sentence? I've been trying to understand what it means, but have not been able to. Maybe it is because I am not sure what the context of the sentence is about? I've used google translator for the whole sentence and each word individually, but have been unsuccessful in understanding what it means.

any help would be appreciated. thx!

[skylee]

a direct translation would be "emotional sadness".

I am not sure if there are other kinds of sadness, e,g physical sadness ...

[han]

thanks. That's the translation I get when I used an online translation device. though it doesn't seem correct to me because when i translated the words individually and then put the translations together, it doesn't quite add up.

[Kenny同志]

It's taken for granted that sadness itself is of emotion, so 情绪上的 is obviously unnecessary.

Simply cut it.

You might be tempted to laugh at one who says "my male father".

[SiMaKe]

This phrase, in Chinese, gets very few Google hits (180). However, here is one example of the (partial) context of the phrase found here:

实际上，PTG至少部分是自我增强错觉，这种错觉有助于个体用来帮助人们平衡情绪上的悲伤。

This is from an academic paper on "post-trauma growth" (PTG).

The phrase in question could be translated as "emotional grief", as in "how does one handle the emotional grief of losing one's spouse?".

While technically unnecessary, since grief is by definition an emotion, this phrase is not all that uncommon. "Emotional grief" gets 36,000 Google hits. Rightly or wrongly, I believe the coupling of these terms is meant to intensify the idea of "grief".

Or it's just overblown academic prose. :rolleyes:

[han]

thanks for all the great explanations! you both have helped a lot!