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The untranslatable words that you love | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Flarioca Heptaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5694 days ago 635 posts - 816 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Esperanto, French, EnglishC2, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Catalan, Mandarin | Message 25 of 61 02 November 2011 at 1:05am | IP Logged | |||||
Iversen It seems to me (no knowledge about Welsh at all, btw.) that hiraeth has the same meaning of saudade, which is a word people like to claim to be "untranslatable". As far as I understand, the German word Sehnsucht carries most of the same idea. About the word Gemütlichkeit, there is this very nice song, from Mogli's movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCv0cRSdh68 I think that words are untranslatable, if one wants, but only as much as each word touches different memories for each person. A simple word like love, for instance, will remind different stories for each of us. Though we all believe to understand the same thing, it is easy to argue that it cannot be exactly the same. So, even when we speak our native language, deep inside, we will not be totally understood by other people. I'm sure this is not an original idea and I might also agree with anyone who says that this is a way too picky line of reasoning. Edited by Flarioca on 02 November 2011 at 1:06am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gerund Newbie United States Joined 4616 days ago 12 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish | Message 26 of 61 02 November 2011 at 2:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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I do think it violates my intended spirit of the thread, anyway, to quibble over my
decision to dub words "untranslatable." I simply see that term as a simplistic way at looking at a more general truth about language learning. Yes, there are relatively unique concepts that might be expressed in multiple languages, but that doesn't mean that most other languages could easily express them. Maybe five or ten languages can express the idea of "hygge" or "saudade" in a fairly similar manner, but neither can be well-articulated in English (or many other languages) except through metaphor or overly analytic sentences that rob the terms of their essence. One of the cool things about learning languages, in my opinion, is broadening my understanding of the world and of my fellow humans. I had never before thought to define the feeling evoked by "hygge" until I encountered the word. Just because three or four or twelve other languages could express the same doesn't change the fact that I would have been denied that understanding if I chose to remain confined to expressing myself in English. Conversely, while I agree with Flarioca that it might be argued that no word is translatable, in a certain sense, that doesn't make it any less valuable to try to understand something as foreign and inscrutable as a fellow human-being :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mashmusic11235 Groupie United States Joined 5311 days ago 85 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese | Message 27 of 61 02 November 2011 at 3:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well said, Gerund.
I have an affection myself for "untranslatable" words. I knew about hygge and saudade (I learned that one from listening to Portuguese Fado music). One of my favorites, though, is "l'esprit d'escalier," literally "the spirit of the staircase." It means figuring out all the things you should've said after you've left a conversation, or, according to the first definition of the term I ever saw, "walking away from an argument and having the argument-winning comment pop into your mind." Another favorite linguistic nuance of mine (not a specific word) is the way the Chinese phrase things. For instance, "I run, catch bus go Garden Road visit father take see doctor" (我走，搭巴士去花園道探爸爸帶佢睇醫生), at least in Cantonese, makes perfect sense, while a native English speaker saying that would be considered either thoroughly unintelligent, or someone who had a learning disability. This isn't a WORD per se, but I think a general point that words in Chinese languages mean more than their one-word translation into English, if that makes sense. Edited by mashmusic11235 on 02 November 2011 at 3:15am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lecavaleur Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4589 days ago 146 posts - 295 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish | Message 28 of 61 02 November 2011 at 4:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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I would not agree that no word is translatable. I think at least words for basic common nouns are translatable since their definitions are directly related to that of an object common to almost all cultures. Table, as in the household object with a flat surface supported by usually four legs, is perfectly translated into German as Tisch.
If we get into other definitions of table, then there might be complications... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 61 02 November 2011 at 9:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, we have discussed on the basis of the word "untranslatable", and if Gerund had another intention with the thread then we will of course take that into account.
I agree with flarioca that everything in principle is untranslatable because everything in a language is tied by emotional and more hardcore associations to the situation of those that use it. Which also is what I tried to say when I pointed out that even an exact copy of Big Ben in Tokyo wouldn't be the same as the original Big Ben in London - not only would the surroundings be different, but you would know that it was a copy. In language we always have to make compromises when we do a translation. Sometimes we find something in the target language that corresponds closely in wordorder and semantical fields to a given expression in the base language, sometimes not. If not, then we can choose to placate those who are interested in the original version by making a hyperliteral translation, or we can choose to bow to the expectations of a reader who really couldn't care less about the language of the original, but who just wants a wellwritten version in his/her language with more or less the same meaning, and then we produce the the usual kind of free translation (cfr the expression "traduttore tradittore" in Italian). Even quite commonplace names for objects have fuzzy semantical edges. Not only are there 'tables' in English which wouldn't be called 'Tisch' in German (for instance a grammatical table). The wellknown fourlegged piece of furniture is so intenational that it mostly can be identified as the same kind of object across cultures, but what about 'tables' which haven't got legs? Or switch to colours and chaos reigns. Or to jobs that may have very different content in different cultures. Actually the thing might be identified as the same thing in two cultures (more or less), but we have vastly different attitudes to it - a direct translation might then elicitg very different reactions than the original (i.e. the words 'liberal' or 'pious' or 'democratic'). I guess the original meaning of Gerund could be to express happiness about the enlargement of your horizon which you gain because every language and every dialect contain things which you didn't know already. And I certainly share that feeling. There would be no point in learning languages for fun if you didn't get new perspectives through that study. Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2011 at 9:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hcueva Tetraglot Newbie Mexico Joined 4736 days ago 13 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, German, French | Message 30 of 61 19 November 2011 at 7:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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Mexican Spanish "no mames" is an extremely useful phrase that I haven't found in other languages.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6394 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 31 of 61 19 November 2011 at 9:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I believe the American hip hop phrase "no homo" is pretty hard to translate into another language. Edited by Ari on 19 November 2011 at 9:43am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| vilas Pentaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6772 days ago 531 posts - 722 votes Speaks: Spanish, Italian*, English, French, Portuguese | Message 32 of 61 21 November 2011 at 11:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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There is a huge collection of untranslatable word in the book "The meaning of tingo"written by Adam Jacot de Boinod. Here a description of this book A garden of delights for the word obsessed: a funny, amazing, and even profound world tour of the best of all those strange words that don't have a precise English equivalent, the ones that tell us so much about other cultures' priorities and preoccupations and expand our minds. Did you know that people in Bolivia have a word that means "I was rather too drunk last night and it's all their fault"? That there's no Italian equivalent for the word "blue"? That the Dutch word for skimming stones is "plimpplamppletteren"? This delightful book, which draws on the collective wisdom of more than 254 languages, includes not only those words for which there is no direct counterpart in English ("pana po'o" in Hawaiian means to scratch your head in order to remember something important), but also a frank discussion of exactly how many Eskimo words there are for snow and the longest known palindrome in any language ("saippuakivikauppias"--Finland). And all right, what in fact is "tingo"? In the Pascuense language of Easter Island, it's to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by asking to borrow them. Well, of course it is. Enhanced by its ingenious and irresistible little Schott's Miscellany/Eats Shoots and Leaves package and piquant black-and-white illustrations throughout, The Meaning of Tingo is a heady feast for word lovers of all persuasions. Viva Tingo! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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