Wanikani puts 痛恨 as ‘regretful’ but it sounds like it’s closer in meaning to ‘regrettable’. A regretful mistake doesn’t make sense, only a person can feel regretful, it must be regrettable right?
I’m seeing some definitions for 痛恨 like たいへん残念がること, which is quite similar to regretful, IMO.
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It’s because it’s a noun in Japanese that’s in fact a noun/verb (yes, both) in Chinese. You ‘painfully hate’ something you regret. Here, the mistake is characterised by that feeling of ‘painful hatred/regret’, which is why it’s written as 痛恨のミス. 痛恨 doesn’t mean ‘regretful’ or ‘regrettable’ per se, but refers to the feeling of painful regret or hatred itself. This is just a case of a translation being misleading because we’re expecting a one-to-one match.
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