I'm taking a refresher course, so to speak, on the Four Noble Truths. We're using a text by the Venerable Ajahn Sumedho in the course. Originally from Seattle, in the 1960s Ajahn Sumedho was ordained as a monk in the Thai Forest Tradition of Theravada Buddhism. Later he established monasteries in the United Kingdom.
Anyway -- the Four Noble Truths have been translated into English every which way, but in doing so much subtlety is lost. The issue with translating the Pali/Sanskrit word dukkha as "suffering" has been discussed here before. Many translators have abandoned "suffering" and switched to "unease" or "stress."
Ajahn Sumedho goes in a different direction. Instead of "life is suffering" (or unease, or stress), he says the first insight of the Four Noble Truths is "there is suffering."
The ignorant person says, 'I'm suffering. I don't want to suffer. I meditate and I go on retreats to get out of suffering, but I'm still suffering and I don't want to suffer.... How can I get out of suffering? What can I do to get rid of it?' But that is not the First Noble Truth; it is not: 'I am suffering and I want to end it.' The insight is, 'There is suffering'.
Now you are looking at the pain or the anguish you feel - not from the perspective of 'It's mine' but as a reflection: 'There is this suffering, this dukkha'. It is coming from the reflective position of 'Buddha seeing the Dhamma.' The insight is simply the acknowledgment that there is this suffering without making it personal. That acknowledgment is an important insight; just looking at mental anguish or physical pain and seeing it as dukkha rather than as personal misery - just seeing it as dukkha and not reacting to it in a habitual way.
However you translate "dukkha," I think "there is dukkha" may be more helpful than "life is dukkha." When we say "life is dukkha," do we mean that life itself is just awful and maybe should be avoided? I'm not sure that's what the Buddha meant. But "there is dukkha" can't be argued with, I don't think.
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