The American idiom "to pass the buck" is translated in Korean as 책임을 전가하다. 책임(責任) means "responsibility," and 전가(轉嫁) means "to impute" or "to attribute."
What I find interesting about the Korean expression is that 전가(轉嫁) also means "to remarry" on the part of a woman. The Chinese characters literally mean "transfer the wife's marriage."
Unloading your wife onto the back of another man seems like a perfect example of "passing the buck."
"책임을 전가하다" sounds very formal. more commonly, I would say "책임을 돌리다".
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your experiences here on your blog --- I enjoyed this post, and I'm looking forward to more.
ReplyDeleteI usually use 책임을 떠넘기다. 우연 I have found this blog and then shared to my friend who wanna know Korean slang. :)
ReplyDeleteWhen I was young I studied from 사자소학 t 소학 , so every post you wrote is impressive. Quite interesting. So happy to know this blog :)