I can’t find any good English word for this at all.
Fate and destiny doesn’t work, because they deal with the future or where you’re going. 緣分 deals with the here and now. It’s basically the classmates you have, who you’re born to, who you end up working for/with, who you date/marry, even down to the smallest thing such as what you buy, or what house you rent/buy.
It influences destiny/fate, but it doesn’t define it. So I struggle to find an English word for this.
Fate.
No, I just explained that it isn’t fate. There’s a separate Chinese word for that.
命運 is more like luck.
緣分 is your destiny.
E.g. People often ask me if I have a gf, and when i tell them I can’t find one they say. 你的緣分還沒到。 Your destiny hasn’t arrived yet.
I think fate covers that sense of your present circumstances.
Luck is 運氣
I feel it’s a concept that stuff shouldn’t be forced… like if you don’t have 緣分 with a particular girl, forcing it will only lead to pain and suffering (like say you got her to marry you, and the marriage could end up like shit because the two of you just aren’t compatible)…
I just don’t know if this should be in the religion forum as well.
“If you’re not fated to be with that girl, forcing it…” seems pretty close
It might be hard to get the exact same feeling because it’s a really culturally specific topic.
You’re way overthinking this. To answer your question of “what is the closest word in English?” The answer.is fate or destiny.
Is there a closer word? No, there is not.
Sometimes there just aren’t exact translations for things.
It also doesn’t seem like a concept westerners are comfortable with, because it implies that there’s an invisible hand guiding you, rather than getting the girl or job by your own effort (whereas the fate would have led you to it regardless of what you do). Westerners believe in pulling yourself up by your bootstrap, whereas 緣分 is completely polar opposite of it.
meant-to-be-togetherness
A good question to ask LLM’s:
How much can we trust LLM’s?
How much can we trust random strangers on the internet?
Are you capable determining if it is writing a reasonable answer to that question? If not then just ignore it.
So far most answers are similar to what it wrote.
I also asked to make up a new English word for 緣分:
Trained on data from Internet forums and blogs, 100% bulletproof.
I was gonna say serendipity. That deals more in the present
Predestined relationship. Maybe not catchy, probably the most accurate?
I’m times when words don’t translate directly, lord praise the descriptive sentence…
This brings lot to mind, or the notion of being in the cards.
Witkionary:
Earlier we had karmic connection and karmic tie. There’s also karmic synergy and the notion of the planets/stars being aligned or that our time has (or has not yet) come.
Lebenslanger Schicksalschatz
That’s probably the most true to the original meaning.