十年來的感受和得著

[li3wei1]

I'm doing some free translation for a charity that does stuff for child cancer patients in Hong Kong. This was a subheading. I know what all the words mean, it's just the combination of 感受 and 得著 that's got me stumped. I see similar phrases on the internet, often in religious contexts, but I haven't seen a good English translation. The section this is the subheading for talks about how volunteers find their work rewarding in many ways.

Any ideas?

[skylee]

I think very simply 得着 can be translated to what one has learnt. The other one is of course what one feels.

[陳德聰]

“Touch“ seems amusing as a transliteration, but is this a Hong Kong-ism I wasn't aware of?

[li3wei1]

Could 感受 be 'experience'? How about 'Ten years of experience and learning'? That doesn't fit the rest of the section, though.

The first sentence after the subhead is 這十年來，她們雖然不求回報的付出，可是仍有很多的得著, and I translate 得著 as 'reward'.

The uses of 感受和得着 that come up in Google all seem to be from similar situations: what people get out of visiting hospital patients or working with other unfortunate people, or working with other people in a group, sometimes but not always as part of a religious organisation, and almost always in Hong Kong. See, for instance, the caption to the picture here: people sitting around sharing their feelings and what they've learned. Or is it what they've gained?

[skylee]

"gained" is ok imo.

[Hermione Yu]

In mainland, in putonghua, we don't use the word "得著". I don't exactly know what this word means. Maybe "收获” is the word we usually use for expressing the same meaning. So i think both the words "gained" and "reward" are ok.

[陳德聰]

Ten years of "experience and gains" does not really sound very good in English, but is probably fine.