Can This Love Be Translated?

The Vocabulary of Silence

There’s a beat in the early episodes of Netflix’s *Can This Love Be Translated?* that’s been stuck in my head. Joo Ho-jin (Kim Seon-ho), a multilingual interpreter who can rattle off Japanese, English, and Italian with almost mechanical accuracy, is looking at global superstar Cha Mu-hee (Go Youn-jung). He understands every word she’s saying in four different languages. He still can’t tell what she actually means. That’s the joke at first—and, eventually, the ache—across this 12-episode run. Written by the veteran Hong Sisters and directed by Yoo Young-eun, it introduces itself as a breezy, globe-hopping rom-com, then quietly yanks the floor out from under you and turns into a sharper psychological drama. I showed up for flirtation in postcard Italy. I ended up watching something closer to a study of how far apart two people can be, even when they’re talking.



The Hong Sisters are usually in their comfort zone when there’s a supernatural hook (*Hotel del Luna*, *Alchemy of Souls*), so a mostly “real world” setup feels weirdly defiant. Still, they can’t resist a swerve into the unreal. The show’s biggest—and most divisive—move is Mu-hee’s trauma response. Spooked by sudden fame and gnawed at by old insecurity, she splinters into an alter ego: Do Ra-mi, the blunt, chaotic zombie character from the film that made her famous. I’m not convinced this detour fully lands. Using dissociative identity disorder like a rom-com lever to trigger confessions is, at best, shaky. (In a weaker series, it could turn ugly fast.) And yet there’s an odd, imperfect kindness in the execution. Ho-jin doesn’t recoil. He treats Ra-mi like one more language he has to learn.



Kim Seon-ho is doing genuinely interesting work. After a stretch of darker, rougher roles, his return to romance isn’t a slide back into easy charm. He plays Ho-jin with a painful rigidity—shoulders locked when Mu-hee walks in, an eyebrow twitch that looks measured down to the millimeter as he tries not to feel anything. This is a man who hides behind fluency. Go Youn-jung, on the other hand, is all nerves and sharp corners. She ricochets off his brick-wall calm like someone terrified the room will suddenly decide she’s a fraud. Their chemistry isn’t fireworks. It’s two worn-out people slowly realizing they don’t have to keep performing.



In the end, *Can This Love Be Translated?* is lumpy and not always graceful. The middle stretch sags, and the whiplash between sunny Canadian travelogue and heavy melodrama is going to annoy anyone who wants a clean, straightforward love story. But it has real warmth where it counts. “There are as many languages as there are people,” an older novelist tells Ho-jin halfway through. The show’s point isn’t that love means finding someone who naturally speaks your language. It’s finding someone willing to sit with your tangled, broken vocabulary—and do the hard work of translating anyway.