It’s water under the bridge.

2024年9月8日

A: I’m very sorry for my mistake on the project.
B: Don’t worry about it. It’s water under the bridge.
A: Thank you. It won’t happen again.

In this situation, what should you say “It’s water under the bridge” in Japanese?

Business

B：もう過すぎたことですし。

Note: This is not a word-for-word translation.

A word-for-word translation

B：橋ばしの下したの水みずです。

It’s a correct sentence, but of course, we don’t use this in the situation.
It’s a kind of metaphor.

For your information, the Japanese language has a phrase ‘水みずに流ながそう‘.

It’s a similar metaphor and we use it when we both want to pretend the trouble never happened or when we forgive someone’s fault.