find even dog poop

[keannu]

A: Where did all the glue go?
B: Right. As the saying goes “When you wantto find even dog poop to use as medicine, there isn’t any”, when I need it, I can’t find it.


The underlined is a Korean saying's translation. If I have made any other mistakes, please correct them.

 

[Skrej]

B: Right. As the saying goes “When you want (space) to find even dog poop to use as medicine, there isn’t any”; when I need it, I can’t find it.

I think we're all struggling to answer this one, because we're trying to understand the idiom. Setting aside the idiom, which has us flabbergasted, I think you need a semicolon at the least towards the end.

English has the expression of "Never any X when you need some" or a similar variant of "Can't ever find X when you need it", which I think has the same idea of something always being in plain sight or readily available, until you actually need it.

However, I'm a little confused about the dog poop as medicine bit - how does using dog poo as medicine relate to it being unavailable when you really need it? Assuming there's a need for dog poo, what's the connection to using it as medicine? If I need it and it's unavailable, it doesn't really matter what I'm using it for, does it? Is it something about even when you're using it for an unintended purpose, you can't find it?

In English, we often leave out the reason for needing/wanting it, unless it's just not very clear. Which, in the case of dog poo, I reckon it isn't! So, perhaps something like "There's never any dog poop around, even when you want it for medicine."

I really feel though, like I'm missing the connection about medicine, which might change how I'd express it in English.

 

[keannu]

I think we're all struggling to answer this one, because we're trying to understand the idiom. Setting aside the idiom, which has us flabbergasted, I think you need a semicolon at the least towards the end.

English has the expression of "Never any X when you need some" or a similar variant of "Can't ever find X when you need it", which I think has the same idea of something always being in plain sight or readily available, until you actually need it.

However, I'm a little confused about the dog poop as medicine bit - how does using dog poo as medicine relate to it being unavailable when you really need it? Assuming there's a need for dog poo, what's the connection to using it as medicine? If I need it and it's unavailable, it doesn't really matter what I'm using it for, does it? Is it something about even when you're using it for an unintended purpose, you can't find it?

In English, we often leave out the reason for needing/wanting it, unless it's just not very clear. Which, in the case of dog poo, I reckon it isn't! So, perhaps something like "There's never any dog poop around, even when you want it for medicine."

I really feel though, like I'm missing the connection about medicine, which might change how I'd express it in English.

It means that even a humble or useless thing can't be found when you need it as a valuable thing.
In reality, we wouldn't need dog poo as medicine, so this saying just emphasizes that something is not available when we do need it.