苦難→苦汁
I think Paul got this from the web originally, so I don't want to change it unnecessarily. Also, with my non-native speaker judgement, I think either is ok.
"苦難をなめ" also gets many hits in google (twice as many as "苦汁 をなめ"!), and they ar enot all from tatoeba :-).
I think these are variants so why not make a new sentence and link it as a paraphrase?
If Tommy with his native-speaker judgement says it should be 苦汁をなめる, you should probably trust him rather than Google. ☺
The real numbers are 225 and 262, so there are more results for 苦汁をなめる after all. In any case, if fcbond agrees, I’d suggest we let Tommy adopt the sentence and administer to it any changes that he feels are necessary in order to make it sound more natural. The Tatoeba project asks us to adopt only sentences in our native language.
>>> fcbond is actually a special case.
>>> At one time, all of blay_paul's sentences were assigned to fcbond's username, I think.
I wasn’t aware of that. In that case, I’d like to add (as a final remark from me) that Tommy can fully be trusted.
You should be really careful when you use Google to see the frequency. According to my experience, when it says there are more than 200 hits, it can't be trusted anymore.
The best way is to search with longer phrases.
"苦汁を(なめても|嘗めても|舐めても)" 27 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search....0.kRP01waE6T4
"辛酸を(なめても|嘗めても|舐めても)" 114 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search...iw=296&bih=255
"辛苦を(なめても|嘗めても|舐めても)" 16 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search...82.54-002_Ip-s
"苦難を(なめても|嘗めても|舐めても)" 2 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search...64.GCjuMIecIt8
"苦汁を(なめることになった|嘗めることになった|舐めることになった)" 37 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search...64.dgRTcbu_mQQ
"辛酸を(なめることになった|嘗めることになった|舐めることになった)" 88 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search....0.b7Hfed44v1A
"辛苦を(なめることになった|嘗めることになった|舐めることになった)"
https://www.google.co.jp/search...54.qvu-89U1ZdU
"苦難を(なめることになった|嘗めることになった|舐めることになった)" 10 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search...44.0L0cgTLDp7g
"苦汁を(なめない|嘗めない|舐めない)" 29 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search...85.ozr2LOh3t_s
"辛酸を(なめない|嘗めない|舐めない)" 68 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search...09.IBggK4BB91A
"辛苦を(なめない|嘗めない|舐めない)" 6 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search...86.Si8yZ6PHkj8
"苦難を(なめない|嘗めない|舐めない)" 0 hits
https://www.google.co.jp/search...15.CRUf-No0z3Y
Do you still believe what Google initially said?
苦汁をなめる, 辛酸をなめる and 辛苦をなめる are all idioms. They can be understood literally: you can lick bitter juice, you can lick something spicy and something sour, you can lick something spicy and something bitter. But you can't lick hardships. That's why I feel 苦難をなめる sounds strange.
Google results above seem to prove that 苦難をなめる is not so common. It is still used by some people, including the novelist Sakaguchi Ango.
http://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/0...902_37421.html
要するに私たちが旅館をさがして苦難をなめたのは、
I wouldn't dare to say they're wrong. Maybe many other native speakers think it's OK.
Thanks everyone for your careful analysis.
However, I stand by my decision. I agree google counts aren't terrifically accurate, which is I did actually look through the google results, and checked that 苦難をなめ* is being used relatively frequently in what is obviously edited text by native speakers. Therefore, I think we should not correct it here. On the other hand, 苦汁をなめ is a good variant (possibly even better variant) so we should add a new sentence (and also for 辛酸をなめ* which is even more common).
Changing the subject, I am fairly busy in my day job, so if anyone wants to adopt the sentences I inherited from Paul, I would be happy to pass them on :-). I have seen a lot of good comments from both tommy_san and CK: would you like to take the Japanese and English ones respectively?
I'm afraid I don't really feel like taking care of sentences written by other people. Usually I don't like them enough (I'd say it in a different way and I personally believe my version is better), but they're not bad enough to justify a change.
I've been putting the sentences I like into my lists (http://tatoeba.org/jpn/sentences_lists/show/3185 and http://tatoeba.org/jpn/sentences_lists/show/3514) and adding the OK tag to them.
Then I'll look after them for the time being.