I will love you forever, more or less

An American is talking translation with a Japanese who lived in Korea for more than 20 years. 

[A translator] must keep his readers’ sensibilities in mind. [The Japanese] cites a common Korean expression of fondness that he had trouble translating in a novel. ‘A Korean who loves someone might say, “I’ll wait for you for ten years, for a hundred years, for a thousand years!” And to a Korean reader this would be absolutely normal.’ But translating the phrase literally would perplex the Japanese reader. ‘“A hundred years?” he’d wonder. “But I’ll be dead by then!”’

source:

The Invitation-Only Zone: the true story of North Korea’s abduction project

by Robert S. Boynton

2016. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York