Actually, there are generally words that don't quite translate well. It's generally subtle connotations, so you can get the general meaning of a sentence, but n

Actually, there are generally words that don't quite translate well. It's generally subtle connotations, so you can get the general meaning of a sentence, but not some of the undertones as easily. Since you won't get a compiler error if you miss some of the subtle differences in a translation and you'd need to be familiar with both languages in question, it's harder to pick up such differences. For some examples of what I mean by concepts that are sometimes difficult to translate, look at most examples on this blog: www.betterthanenglish.com/ The older examples are generally better, and I don't agree with the phrase "untranslatable word", but it should provide some general idea of the kinds of ambiguities that would be lost in translation.