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Words that don't translate into English
- Mobius01 6y agoInteresting. Where I come from in Brazil, “sobremesa” is used to describe a dessert, direct translation. I’d also add the Portuguese word “saudade”, which is a sense of yearning or of missing someone/something - often hard to convey in English.
- frosted-flakes 6y agoHow does "saudade" differ from nostalgia?
- perl4ever 6y agoHow does nostalgia differ from wistfulness?
- frosted-flakes 6y agoWistfulness is a general feeling of sadness and yearning towards something not present, whether or not you've experienced it before. "He was wistful about the life that could have been his if only he'd said 'yes' when he'd had the chance." Nostalgia is a distinct feeling of want for something in your past, often from your childhood. "His nostalgia for the video games of his youth coloured his perception of how bad they really were." Since you brought it up, and now that I've thought about it for a while, "wistful" seems like it might be a better fit for "saudade", but I'm sure that that word has all sorts of meanings that wistful doesn't have.
- lhorie 6y ago"saudade" can be used in the phrase "matar a saudade" (literally "kill the feeling of longing", by for example, meeting a loved one who you haven't seen in a long time). Saudade can similarly be used without the connotation of a long time having passed, e.g. "já estou com saudade com você" (I already miss you)
- telmo 6y agoIt doesn't (source: I'm Portuguese). It is just an often repeated cliché. What I would say is that Portuguese culture has a stronger preference for expressions of nostalgia than the average.
- pwdisswordfish2 6y agoTIL English has no word for pining.
- toyg 6y ago"Pining" is a bit too strong for "saudade", and it's an action rather than a feeling.
- Udik 6y agoSome journalist invented a few years ago that there is this mysterious, untranslatable Italian expression "bella figura" (or its opposite, "brutta figura"). Which in fact simply means "good impression"- as in "let's make a good impression". This article goes at it again. It even translates it correctly when presenting it in an anecdote, but then reverts to a literal, wrong translation to make it sound more exotic.
- ithkuil 6y agoThat's because the article attaches to it a special aura of "italianess" as if Italians were obsessed by their looks in a unique way (which might be true or not, but I don't see how this translates to the untranslatability of the word itself, rather than just being the side effect of capitalizing a trope)
- jaclaz 6y agoAlso, bella (o brutta) figura is in Italian much more related to behaviour/politeness/education/culture, than to appearance. Though you can say that something (or even someone) "fa figura", if it looks better than what it is really made of.
- esperent 6y agoI've read multiple articles like this, and always find them interesting. These words, of course, can be translated to English. They just can't be translated to a single word or phrase, but must instead come with a couple of paragraphs explaining their cultural significance. I've never seen articles going the other way, however. What are some examples of English words or phrases that are so loaded with cultural significance that they are difficult to translate?
- rwmj 6y agoApparently "cabin fever" is difficult to translate into Japanese. My theory is that Japanese homes are so small that it's simply a fact of living there that requires little explanation.
- bluGill 6y agoSmall houses are not required for cabin fever.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dntbnmpls 6y ago> What are some examples of English words or phrases that are so loaded with cultural significance that they are difficult to translate? There's more than one way to skin a cat. The whole nine yards. Also, there was a thread where a lot of foreigner CS students use english words because many of the words don't have direct translations or sensible translations - like mouse. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377270 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377270
- umvi 6y agoI mean, those are idioms, but they can be easily translated. "There are multiple valid solutions for a given problem"
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- awillen 6y agoI've always found the idea of words that can't translate to miss the mark, especially in the context of articles like this that provide a translation. It's really just that we don't have a singular corresponding word, not that they can't be translated. It's kind of like how people say Eskimos have 50 (or however many words for snow). Any word they have for snow can be described in a corresponding way in English using adjectives, but for them it makes sense to boil down each of those concepts to a common word, since Eskimos have a more frequent need to describe snow than most English speakers. What's interesting to reflect on is why some cultures need a singular word for something while others don't. It's why I love the word schadenfreude - not for what it means, but for the fact that Germans so readily identify with the idea of taking pleasure from another's misfortune that they coined a word for the term.
- msla 6y agoAnd, of course, the "Eskimo words for snow" thing is a myth in how it's usually understood: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow > Franz Boas did not make quantitative claims[6] but rather pointed out that the Eskimo–Aleut languages have about the same number of distinct word roots referring to snow as English does, but the structure of these languages tends to allow more variety as to how those roots can be modified in forming a single word.[1][note 1][note 2] A good deal of the ongoing debate thus depends on how one defines "word", and perhaps even "word root". [snip] > Languages in the Inuit and Yupik language groups add suffixes to words to express the same concepts expressed in English and many other languages by means of compound words, phrases, and even entire sentences. One can create a practically unlimited number of new words in the Eskimoan languages on any topic, not just snow, and these same concepts can be expressed in other languages using combinations of words. In general and especially in this case, it is not necessarily meaningful to compare the number of words between languages that create words in different ways due to different grammatical structures.
- ithkuil 6y agoWhen I read that I assumed they also have "50" words for coconut
- jbay808 6y agoShoganai translates very easily into the English phrase "it can't be helped", with very little lost in the translation. By contrast, I think a great, useful Japanese phrase that I wish we had in English but is very hard to translate is otsukaresama (お疲れ様) and its variants. It's what you say to someone at the end of the work day, or after finishing something challenging like a hike, or just to acknowledge that some task is being put away for now. The closest thing might be "good job", or "good work". But otsukaresama has no implied assessment of someone's performance. Which is good, because it means anyone can say it - a peer, family, superior, junior. You can say it to be comforting even after someone gives up for the day having failed to solve a problem, where "good work" might sound sarcastic. A literal translation might be "with respect to the tired", or something like that.
- pezezin 6y agoOtsukaresama can also be use a greeting, as in you are walking down the hall and come across a coworker, you will say "otsukaresamadesu". I have also seen people saying it upon meeting their friends. It can be used for pretty much any circumstance.
- jbay808 6y agoYeah good point! I mean you probably wouldn't use it as a greeting first thing in the morning, but it's great for acknowledging that they've just finished whatever else they were doing before you met up with them. I really like it.
- distantaidenn 6y agoNot just a coworker, but even people that work in the same building as you. Such a useful phrase.
- incompatible 6y ago"Good effort"?
- ithkuil 6y agoWould "let's call it a day" come close?
- notamy 6y agoIf you're interested in this, you may enjoy the subreddit r/DoesNotTranslate.
- namelosw 6y agoThe one thing I love about Chinese is, it's just like English use the canonical 'the' instead of German 'der/die/das' - it rarely classifies things. For example, 'someone is doing something' would be like 'someone current do something' in Chinese. There's no 'ing' postfix, instead, you add 'current' or 'now' only when it matters. There's almost no redundancy of information, thus there are fewer chances to specify illegal statements. When Chinese find out Finland or German native-speakers sometimes also make grammar mistakes when speaking their own languages, it was mind-blowing... Sadly, I'm not sure if it is influenced by other languages, there are more and more classifiers in modern Chinese: 1. Though gender is not classified by oral Chinese language, it was classified in the modern written Chinese language. 2. The infamous quantity classifications as the article mentioned. Non-native speakers would find these pretty hard to remember. A 'tiao' of fish, A 'duo' of mushroom, doesn't really exist in the old Chinese, they were just a fish or a mushroom. It was only mandatory when it's needed, like a bunch of fish.
- fiblye 6y ago> A 'tiao' of fish, A 'duo' of mushroom, doesn't really exist in the old Chinese I'm not sure about those words specifically, but counters/classifiers in Chinese go back centuries and beyond. Linguists will often say Korean and Japanese are language isolates, but quite a bit of their grammar heavily inherits from Chinese in some way with little to no change. They use oftentimes identical classifiers in the same way even when referring to one object. e.g., 個/个 is ge/gae/ko in Chinese/Korean/Japanese respectively. They're used for catch-all classifiers. 台 is tai/tae/dai and used to classify machines.
- namelosw 6y agoYou're right about the counters/classifiers do exist in ancient Chinese. If there no classifiers there would be no straight forward way to specify if it's "a cup of water" or it's "a bucket of water". With that being said, there's not many usages of catch-all classifiers, unless it is stretched to balance the number of characters in poems. Usually, there would be no classifier if there's no ambiguity: "一人一桌一椅一扇一抚尺而已" --《口技》("a man, a table, a chair, a fan, a fuchi and that's all") -- 'The beatboxing' The classifies usually are used in listing of things, and they would be postfixes, instead of being used as prefixes like in typical ways: "...金碗二对，金抢碗二个，金匙四十把，银大碗八十个..." -- 《红楼梦》 ("...golden bowls: 2 pairs, golden qiangwan: 2 units, golden keys: 40 grasps, large silver bowls: 80 units...") -- 'The Dream of the Red Chamber'
- irrational 6y agoIt turns out the sobremesa is the perfect word for my own definition of hell on earth. “few pleasures are greater than sharing a table and then chatting nonsense for a hefty portion of what remains of the day.” The author must be a masochist if they think this is pleasurable.
- technothrasher 6y agoI generally wouldn't go for such nonsense either, and I typically share the usual US sentiment at a restaurant of getting in, getting fed, and getting out. But I have to admit that on a trip to Spain a couple years ago, where our two guides for the day had booked us a table at a little restaurant for lunch and I then insisted they come eat with us, before I knew it 2pm became 5pm from us just easily talking about nothing. It was actually quite lovely.
- rswail 6y agoI remember a week of work in Madrid, where a Spanish company, a US company and an Australian company were working together on a bid for a job. The US people suggested breakfast meetings at 7 in the hotel. The Spanish and Aussie people flatly refused. The Spanish wanted lunch from 2 until 4, the Aussies preferred 1 until 2, the Americans 12-1. Dinner was 7 for the Americans, 8-9 for the Aussies, and 9-12 for the Spanish. We didn't win the bid, but as an Aussie, I much prefer the Spanish daily schedule.
- herval 6y agoThe author and a big, big portion of this planet’s inhabitants :) this is a very common habit in a lot of cultures
- 082349872349872 6y agoIn some cultures, it's even considered rude for a table to be bare, without some sort of food on it, during daylight hours.
- lagadu 6y ago
- pezezin 6y agoRegarding Spanish language, I'm surprised that they didn't include "estrenar", that means to use or show something for the first time. Sometimes it can be translated as "release" or "launch", but there is no single English word with the same range of meanings.
- JacksonGariety 6y agoIs there a word for ostensibly punctilious lists that somehow also epitomize cultural diversity?
- umvi 6y agoI think a more difficult Italian one would be "proprio". It's sort of like "proper" but the exact meaning seems difficult to pin down and depends on the context.
- smichel17 6y agoWhat are some different contexts it is used in?
- umvi 6y agoSee sibling comment
- perl4ever 6y agoGiven that a lot of ways of using it seem to parallel "own", consider a sentence that is said to use it to mean "proper": "Non è questa la sede propria per parlarne" The original source translated it as "This isn't the proper place to discuss it." You could say this means "This is not the place that belongs to talk about it". That's stilted English, but in my opinion, better than proper or appropriate, it captures the relatedness of "own" with the different senses of something belonging. The word "proper" confuses things because it is spelled more like the Italian word, but functionally it's more specialized. I went and read about this because "proprio" made me think of the English word "proprioception" which was coined in the early 20th century based on the Latin "proprius" meaning "own". And then French "propre" comes to mind.
- umvi 6y agoI suppose "own" might cover more of the use cases. But consider: - "adesso" (now) vs. "proprio adesso" (literally right now) - "Proprio così" (precisely) I believe you can also use it like: - "Where are you from?" - "DC" - "DC proprio?" (DC proper?) - "No, technically I'm from a small town in Northern Virginia"
- scoutt 6y agoYou can also say something like "sei proprio uno stupido" which means "you are actually stupid".
- beefsack 6y agoIt's not just lexicon, but sometimes also syntax which doesn't translate cleanly. Japanese has a really interesting piece of syntax in the ditransitive adversative passive, which is similar to the English passive construction but with a second object which can be used to denote that someone was adversely impacted by it. There is an example on Wikipedia[1], it's definitely a difficult thing for native English speakers to get used to. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_voice#Adversative_passive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_voice#Adversative_pass...
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoCan you give an example? Google is drawing a blank for that. My favorite piece of Japanese syntax is that adjectives can be conjugated for tense and conditionals, meaning that "It was delicious" has to be expressed as "It is delicioused" (oishikatta desu) and you can say "if it had not been red" with a single word (akakunakattara).
- beefsack 6y agoI found an example, which I've added to the parent post.
- andrewnc 6y agoOne of my favorites is the Tagalog word "daw" pronounced "dao". You put it on any phrase where you don't accept the burden of truthfulness. "mom said dinner is at 6 daw" If it's not at 6, that's too bad, not my fault. It's so fascinating culturally and really fun to use.
- d_silin 6y agoFun fact that always amused me - Russian language has the word for a stronger flavour of "hopelessness/despair": безнадежность->безысходность Roughly translated as "endless despair"
- ithkuil 6y agoA nice Italian word that might be hard to translate is "ni" which means "yes and no" (literally first letter of "no" and second letter of "si", which means yes). Often I hear English speakers use the answer "It depends." where an Italian would use "Ni."
- ronsor 6y agoIsn't that just "maybe"?
- ithkuil 6y agoNo. There is a word for maybe/perhaps which is "forse". The difference is that "maybe" implied something is not known or can't be known or may or may not happen, as a matter of possiblity/probability. "Ni" OTOH is a statement that the question has no definite answer. It's not just that either option can be true, but the question is I'll poses, or the problem is more nuanced etc.
- willyt 6y agoI think a native British English speaker would use maybe in both senses though you'd have to work it out from context. As in. A:'Do you want to go out with me' B:'Maybe...'.
- smichel17 6y agoSeems like that translates to "yes and no" pretty well, no?
- ithkuil 6y agoNi. On one hand that's exactly what it means, yet the fact that a sizeable fraction of Italian speakers accepted a new lexeme in their heads means that it has an extra expressive power, perhaps due the word play, that conveys an extra layer of meaning that would be lost if you just say "yes and no" (i.e. "si e no" or "no e si"). Funny enough, sometimes it's even hard to transate the untranslatability of something.
- franciscop 6y agoAh I was hoping for some different ones in Spanish. I've got a running joke with my American friends: "if I say I'm taking a siesta it feels like I'm being lazy, but call it a power nap and suddenly you are a young energetic entrepreneur even if they are the same" We also have five named eating events, here with their times: - Desayuno (8-9): breakfast - Almuerzo (11-12): second breakfast? Normally a sandwitch or light snack. - Comida (2-3): lunch - Merienda (5-6): third breakfast? tea party? It's an evening snack, mostly eaten by kids - Cena (9-10): dinner
- 082349872349872 6y agoOur germanophones are boring but punctual: their extra meals are Znüni (the 9am) and Zvieri (the 4pm). As far as I'm concerned, it's a oxymoron to eat merienda according to a clock...
- rmsaksida 6y agoI'd say "cunning" is a decent approximation of "esperto". An odd choice for Portuguese...
- herval 6y agoIt can be cunning, but it can also be smart, knowledgeable or clever, depending on tone and context. And can also mean “paying attention” (in parts of the country - “tá esperto”). I believe the original meaning is closer to knowledgeable (from “expertus”)
- lewiscollard 6y agoFrom my background (I grew up in London), "geezer" seems like a decent approximation to me, though there's no female version of that I can think of. I gather it means "old man" elsewhere.
- m463 6y agoI was watching an episode of Arrow and one of the characters said "There is no Russian word for optimist" quick web search says there might not be a native word?
- fuoqi 6y agoWell, English does not have a "native" word for optimist either.
- cycomanic 6y agoI suspect one of the most common German words without translation is "Ansatz" as used in math. I find these specialised/technical wordsand their usage in very specific field quite interesting.
- LoSboccacc 6y agobella figura has little to do with appearance, is a combination with tact and etiquette, and is mostly used sarcastically anyway. oh and the exact translation is good impression, which can also can be used sarcastically in the same way. so at least my language section was poorly written and poorly researched.
- someoneiam 6y agoYeah, I really don't get how they arrived to that conclusion. The meaning of bella figura is good impression, it really isn't ambiguous at all.
- toyg 6y ago> I really don't get how they arrived to that conclusion. It's a cliché in UK. They correctly diagnose the Italian obsession with high standards of appearance, but they liberally use "bella figura" to describe it in contexts we would not consider as such. For example: when dressing to go buy a bit of milk, we wouldn't describe it as an activity that requires "bella figura", we just don't want to look like homeless people and our "not looking homeless" is at a certain standard; but they would say that, by dressing appropriately, we are paying attention to "bella figura". That's because people here can go VERY low on standards of appearance in circumstances like that, while we just won't.
- LoSboccacc 6y agobut that section is singed > Angela Giuffrida in Rome which makes the whole thing extra weird because even if she might not be aware of a direct translation being available she should know how it's used in italy. it's perfectly fine for a finely dressed gentleman to spill a drink on his wife's boss on a party, which is a perfect occasion for a "proprio una bella figura hai fatto" > "yeah, such a good impression you made" and it's so common of an usage I can't fathom how it got related to fashion in the article part she penned.
- jaclaz 6y ago
- zimpenfish 6y agoLanguage Log have been demolishing this ludicrous nonsense for over a decade now[1]. You'd think people would learn. [1] https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2741 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2741 > But what is the notion of untranslatability here? It seems to have been confused with "lack of an exact one-word equivalent". Who on earth ever argued that translatability only exists when source text words are mapped bijectively to target words, each with exactly the same shade of meaning as the corresponding source word? Does French jeune fille fail to translate English girl, and ne … pas fail to translate not? Does English fall down fail to translate French tomber, and look at fail to translate regarder? What kind of madness is this?
- dmitriid 6y agoSuch words are the nightmares of people who translate fiction. Because if in the original you have "toska", you can't really translate it as "dull ache of the soul stemming from longing or pining" as that would surely break the flow of the text. So they might be untranslatable in certain contexts, for sure, and you have to scramble for alternatives which inevitably lose subtle shades of meaning.
- dazzawazza 6y agoGiven that the act of reading is lossy, I don't think this matters too much.
- dmitriid 6y agoIt matters a great deal. For example, Bagheera is female in Russian translations. This breaks the entire notion of Bagheera being an older male friend to Mowgly. This also makes some parts of the books nonsensical. All the characters in Winnie the Pooh represent a group of school boys. When Kanga shows up, it upends their world. In the canonical Russian translation and animation Owl is a fussy old lady. Which reduces all shades of meaning. These are simple works of fiction, and already they are greatly reduced just by the singular gender choices made by translators. And there are dozens to hundreds of such choices per book. Complex books like Too Like Lightning may be even untranslatable entirely because TLL rests on gender ambiguity. Russian has gender even in verbs, so you can see a character's gender even in simple phrases like "I did" which are ambiguous in English. etc. etc. etc.
- altacc 6y agoFor anyone who's interested in these I have a book that I like to flick through occasionally: They Have a Word for It by Howard Rheingold My favourite is Yugen - a Japanese word that encapsulates awareness and appreciation for nature and the universe. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/424092.They_Have_a_Word_for_It https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/424092.They_Have_a_Wo...
- tomaszs 6y agoMissing word: załatwić from polish language.
- Leszek 6y ago"Sort out" is a pretty solid translation IMO
- tomaszs 6y agoTo sort out is equivalent of uporządkować or zająć się czymś. Załatwić is something different.
- Leszek 6y ago"Uporządkować" can be "sort out" too, though I'd more often translate it as "tidy up"; "zająć się czymś" is roughly "take care of something", maybe you could use "occupy yourself with something" if it's more in the time-wasting sense. I stand by "sort out", or even just "sort" as a good translation for załatwić, especially in British English, where I would use "sorted" as a single word sentence similar to "załatwione". There's other possible translations too, I could e.g. imagine using "score" when it's specifically about obtaining something physical, or "get it done" if it's about expediency or perseverance; if anything there's too many ways of translating it!
- tomaszs 6y agoEverything makes perfect sense. But i find sort to have different culture meaning in english than załatwić in polish. When someone sorts something out, he goes and solves something with available methods. When someone goes "załatwić" something, it means he solves something that is impossible to solve or gets something that is impossible to get. To sum it up, i think english vocabulary for sorting something out synonyms ends at some point english speakers can not pass. And than "załatwić" kicks in.
- Leszek 6y ago
- chanux 6y agoI once had to ask a friend whose first language is English, if there is one word to convey 'feeding someone a liquid'. Because one of my friends asked me and I didn't know. In Sinhala[1], my mother tongue, there's a word for that. Povanava (poh-vur-nuh-var) පොවනවා. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_language
- Sharlin 6y agoIn Finnish as well: juottaa is formed from the verb juoda, ”to drink”, but interestingly it is just a case of a general grammatical construction that allows one to turn any verb from ”to do something” to ”to make/have one to do something”. You can even apply it recursively to verbs thus formed, so, for example, juotattaa would mean ”to have someone else feed someone/something liquid”! In principle the grammar allows arbitrarily long constructions, but in practice double applications are already rare although perfectly understandable.
- arexxbifs 6y agoMy native tongue is neither Finnish nor English, but wouldn't "sisu" be translatable as "grit"?
- johan_larson 6y ago"Grit" is a good translation. English-speakers who try to translate the word usually try something like "courage" or "guts", which isn't quite right. "Sisu" is not really about daring; it's more about tenacity and capacity to endure hardship. "Grit" is better.
- lihaciudaniel 6y agoSeems like it didn't made he list unfortunately : https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/dor#Romanian https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/dor#Romanian
- aloukissas 6y agoThe most common Greek word that doesn't translate in other languages is "filotimo" (φιλότιμο). More than a word, it's a virtue that's at the core of our culture. You can read more here [http://helleniccomserve.com/filotimo.html http://helleniccomserve.com/filotimo.html] and elsewhere on the web.
- eythian 6y agoThe "polderen" one is a bit weird, but I think if I said "poldering" everyone where I live (the Netherlands, but I'm from an English speaking country) would know what I meant. The Dutch term for the process is "poldermodel", and in English we use "polder model", and everyone here knows it. Basically, once you've told someone "people meet and hash things out until a consensus is formed" then the English term is stolen fair and square. The actual Dutch term is pretty recent, from the 1980s or so I think.
- 082349872349872 6y agoIf the English equivalent to "meet and hash things out" is "stolen fair and square", that might explain a lot about the Empire :-)
- photonios 6y agoI was expecting the Dutch word "gezellig" to be on the list. I found "polderen" instead. Interesting, "gezellig" is much more used in day to day life than "polderen". I am not even sure most Dutch know what it means.
- pachico 6y agoHere's one I find interesting from Swedish: knullrufs: (slang) sex hair, disordered hair that comes from having sex. Some times, it's possible to say a lot from one single word.
- nanna 6y agoAnyone serous about philosophical concepts should have the incredible Dictionary of Untranslatables (2014) on their shelf. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691138701/dictionary-of-untranslatables https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691138701/di... It's an updated translation of Vocabulaire Européen des Philosophies (2004)
- pathsjs 6y agoThe least translatable idiom from Italian in my head is "Ti voglio bene". It could be translated as "I love you", but that loses a lot of nuance. The literal translation of "I love you" is "Ti amo". So in Italy you have two different expressions that are rendered by the same one in English. But the two are very much not interchangeable. "Ti amo" has a romantic connotation, whereas "Ti voglio bene" does not. What's more, you can also use "Ti voglio bene" in a romantic context, to mean that you love the other person, but not only from the point of view of a romantic relationship though. In a romantic relationship, especially between younger people, it can happen that one says "Ti voglio bene" well before "Ti amo", which has a heavier implication. On the other hand, "Ti voglio bene" can be used with a sibling or a friend, often abbreaviated TVB, whereas "Ti amo" would not be used in this context. As you can see, it is quite difficult to even translate the difference, but it is something well present in the head of italian people.
- toyg 6y agoTVB is weak, got to be at least TVTTTB ;)
- elijahparker 6y agoSomething I appreciated about Indonesian which doesn’t translate well to English (or many other languages that I’m aware of) is their two forms of “we”, inclusive and exclusive. “Kami”, excludes the one being spoken to, “Kita” includes them. In English this difference is typically only implied by context and can be ambiguous.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoI would say it is not so much that the words don’t translate into English as the words encode cultural experiences and emotions that many English speakers haven’t experienced. And I think this is true even in words in the same language. For example “police” means something very different emotionally to a young, urban, black man than an older, suburban white woman. I think there is a food analog as well. There are some foods that I don’t think anyone can cook as well my mother. Objectively, if you tested my mom’s version of the food against in taste test with - 100 people versus a professional chef, most people would pick the chef’s version as tasting better. But for me, the exact smell and taste of my mom’s version brings back those emotions of happiness and closeness from when we would eat the meal together as a family growing up. So I don’t think it is so much differences in language, but differences in experience.
- toyg 6y agoBeyond philosophical debates on untranslatability, I think it's just nice to note specialized words that have no direct single-word equivalent in others. Some of my favourites are the Italian verb apparecchiare (setting up the table before a meal, adding cutlery etc) and its opposite sparecchiare. To have precise words for this activity signals a culture focused on food and urbanity, which the Italian one definitely is.
- willyt 6y agoIt must be a minefield for French people learning English as we have incorporated a so many french words and assigned more specific meanings to them. I might have this example wrong as I don't speak much french, but there must be quite a few like this: English -> French Body 'A human body (alive or dead)' -> Corps Corpse 'A dead body' -> Cadavre Cadaver 'A dead body prepared for burial or medical research' -> ?
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- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kazinator 6y agoFrance: bon apetit (dig in?) Japan: yoroshiku onegaishimasu, tadaima, itadakimasu, genki, otsukaresama deshita, ganbatte ne, ... Laughable subtitles for all these, every time.
- rurban 6y agoThe Austrian equivalent of the Dutch "polderen" is "Sozialpartnerschaft". Also not translatable to English. It's consensual backroom politics between the classical antagonists, industry vs labor unions. It does exist in Ireland also, called "social partnership" or better "Pairtíocht sóisialta", but this not what it is. In Germany it's called "Social Dialogue" but this is far from the Austrian, or Dutch or Irish model. See for example the translation attempts at https://www.linguee.com/german-english/translation/sozialpartnerschaft.html https://www.linguee.com/german-english/translation/sozialpar...