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It’s an absurd argument. Either everything is translatable because language allows for any arbitrarily complex construct that lets you circumlocute your way aro
by GuiA 6y ago
It’s an absurd argument. Either everything is translatable because language allows for any arbitrarily complex construct that lets you circumlocute your way around, or nothing is translatable because everything is steeped in a unique cultural context which you either are a part of or aren’t.
What OP is ranting about is websites glorifying certain words as “untranslatable”, imbuing them with esoteric cultural meaning. As a polyglot and linguistics enthusiast it frustrates me too but we all have to come to terms with people being wrong on the internet some day.
- paganel 6y agoNothing absurd about it, because nobody said translation is easy (apart from some tech people who have been put in front of the problem for the first time). And yes, many of the good literary translations that I’ve read do provide part of the cultural context in the footnotes.
- GuiA 6y agoFrom an epistemological point of view, the word "cat" is as untranslatable as the word "sobremesa". That's the absurd part that gets people in arguments on the internet. In practice, we get by mostly fine (partly because, as you point out, we have footnotes).