I am translating something from English to my mother language (Romanian) and I met the expression ”a sense of” a few times (e.g ”Is there a sense of being drawn to [something/someone/…]?”, ”Do you have any sense of God’s work in your life?” etc).
For the first sentence I think I could say something like ”Is there a tendency of being drawn to…” (of course in Romanian), but this doesn’t apply for the second one. And I cannot easily translate the second sentence if ”having any sense of” is there. I am looking for a different way of saying the same thing. So, how could the second sentence be rephrased without using ”having a sense of”? Or, is there a synonym for ”a sense of” that could be used most of the time?
Answer
“Sense of” is used as a synonym for “feeling”.
“Is there a feeling of being drawn to [something/someone/…]?”
“Do you have any feeling of God’s work in your life?”
The reason it’s difficult to translate is because the author is deliberately trying to avoid the word “feeling”. A sensation is a type of feeling, but one which implies perception rather than emotion. Therefore to have “a sense of” God’s work sounds more objective than to have “a feeling of” God’s work.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Sorin Adrian Carbunaru , Answer Author : Vladimir Kornea
