4 ms·

Interesting, but the premise is nonsense. Obviously these phrases and words do translate. They are translated on the page, into English.

dghf 5y ago
But when people say something “doesn’t translate”, they usually mean (and are understood as meaning) one or both of two things — that it doesn’t translate succinctly, or it doesn’t translate exactly. Japanese honorifics, for example, probably fall under both.
- itdoestranslate 5y ago
  Well, both of those things are true, and are true for any two languages. Easily and succinctly are not absolute. They are functions of the two languages being discussed, and of the two people talking. By the definitions presented here, literally nothing is translatable, you’ve just chosen to an arbitrary line. My primary objection to this entire exercise is that it implies a linguistic preciousness that is really quite superficial. It also implies that “some languages are more cut out than others for certain purposes” and this is absolutely not the case. All languages are equally capable of meaning, and the fact that one language has one word for something and another uses many words for the same thing… that itself doesn’t “mean” anything about either language. It barely says anything about the cultures that use that language.
NylaTheWolf 5y ago
I think they meant it doesn't have an exact one word equivalent.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I can see some words on there that do have a one word equivalent, or is it that the equivalencies can't express the concept but also have other meanings as well. I wonder if that wouldn't be the actual rare words, not just words that translate, but in which all the meanings of a word in translating language are the same as the meanings of the word in the target language. on edit: consider Hov in Danish which the page says does not translate, but I think in English Whoa can handle all permutations of Hov, but I don't think Hov really handles the Keanu Reaves type of Whoa. Thus Hov can translate to English, but Whoa cannot translate to Danish by this kind of strict translation. But if we just accept that the most common meaning of a word a needs to translate then Hov and Whoa can both translate to each other, IMHO.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  Or they are simply giving the closest possible translation. They list “te quiero” as meaning “I love you but not quite. Which is a mistranslation. It literally translates as “I love you”. But at the same time you have “te amo”, which also translates to “I love you” yet they are two different phrases with different meanings.
  - lupire 5y ago
    "te quiero" = "i adore you"
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      That’s not really my understanding of it, but I’m not perfectly bilingual either.
    - jng 5y ago
      Not really. "I adore you" is literally "te adoro". "Querer" in Spanish just means "to love", it's a synonym to "amar", also "to love". "Querer" is more common language and applied non-romantically all the time, and "amar" is more poetic and veers more towards romantic love, but they both mean the same. BTW, "querer" means "to want", but when it is used to convey love (easy to tell by context), it doesn't ring of objectification in any way. "Quiero a mi familia" is the simplest, clearest, way to say "I love my family".
      - wbsss4412 5y ago
        This is what I had thought. And in the way this is written, it’s clear that querer does not have a clear English translation. No English speaker would truly understand the proper meaning and context with which querer is used without knowing some Spanish.
      - School-Cotton 5y ago
        Indeed. When I first started dating someone who is natively bilingual in English and (Northern Mexican) Spanish, she didn’t yet feel strongly enough about me to say “I love you” in English, so she always told me “te quiero”, as there was no English phrase other than “I love you” that fit in that niche.
- itdoestranslate 5y ago
  That has never been the definition of translation.
- hk__2 5y ago
  If that’s the case they should remove all the expressions that are on the website. 5 of the 15 untranslatable Italian “words” are multi-words like “in boca al lupo” (totally translatable: “good luck”) and “rompere il cazzo” (literally “faire chier” in French).
htgb 5y ago
Oh, don't be dull ;) the explanation when selecting a language: > Concepts in Swedish That are difficult to easily and directly translate to other languages. Of course you can explain the concept in English, but you couldn't replace it with a simple translation when used in a sentence. Of course it's just a matter of degree since most words have slightly different connotations in different languages, but I found the lists entertaining and insightful. The quality of the entries vary, of course, but that's not an issue with the premise…
onemoresoop 5y ago
Well, everything can be explained in one way or another but the idea is that there's no direct translation to get the full meaning. My favorite is the German word schadenfreude which clearly has no direct translation into English. It means something like pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune. Notice how many words it takes to explain it...

dghf 5y ago

But when people say something “doesn’t translate”, they usually mean (and are understood as meaning) one or both of two things — that it doesn’t translate succinctly, or it doesn’t translate exactly. Japanese honorifics, for example, probably fall under both.

itdoestranslate 5y ago
Well, both of those things are true, and are true for any two languages. Easily and succinctly are not absolute. They are functions of the two languages being discussed, and of the two people talking. By the definitions presented here, literally nothing is translatable, you’ve just chosen to an arbitrary line. My primary objection to this entire exercise is that it implies a linguistic preciousness that is really quite superficial. It also implies that “some languages are more cut out than others for certain purposes” and this is absolutely not the case. All languages are equally capable of meaning, and the fact that one language has one word for something and another uses many words for the same thing… that itself doesn’t “mean” anything about either language. It barely says anything about the cultures that use that language.

NylaTheWolf 5y ago

I think they meant it doesn't have an exact one word equivalent.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I can see some words on there that do have a one word equivalent, or is it that the equivalencies can't express the concept but also have other meanings as well. I wonder if that wouldn't be the actual rare words, not just words that translate, but in which all the meanings of a word in translating language are the same as the meanings of the word in the target language. on edit: consider Hov in Danish which the page says does not translate, but I think in English Whoa can handle all permutations of Hov, but I don't think Hov really handles the Keanu Reaves type of Whoa. Thus Hov can translate to English, but Whoa cannot translate to Danish by this kind of strict translation. But if we just accept that the most common meaning of a word a needs to translate then Hov and Whoa can both translate to each other, IMHO.
wbsss4412 5y ago
Or they are simply giving the closest possible translation. They list “te quiero” as meaning “I love you but not quite. Which is a mistranslation. It literally translates as “I love you”. But at the same time you have “te amo”, which also translates to “I love you” yet they are two different phrases with different meanings.
- lupire 5y ago
  "te quiero" = "i adore you"
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    That’s not really my understanding of it, but I’m not perfectly bilingual either.
  - jng 5y ago
    Not really. "I adore you" is literally "te adoro". "Querer" in Spanish just means "to love", it's a synonym to "amar", also "to love". "Querer" is more common language and applied non-romantically all the time, and "amar" is more poetic and veers more towards romantic love, but they both mean the same. BTW, "querer" means "to want", but when it is used to convey love (easy to tell by context), it doesn't ring of objectification in any way. "Quiero a mi familia" is the simplest, clearest, way to say "I love my family".
    - wbsss4412 5y ago
      This is what I had thought. And in the way this is written, it’s clear that querer does not have a clear English translation. No English speaker would truly understand the proper meaning and context with which querer is used without knowing some Spanish.
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      Indeed. When I first started dating someone who is natively bilingual in English and (Northern Mexican) Spanish, she didn’t yet feel strongly enough about me to say “I love you” in English, so she always told me “te quiero”, as there was no English phrase other than “I love you” that fit in that niche.
itdoestranslate 5y ago
That has never been the definition of translation.
hk__2 5y ago
If that’s the case they should remove all the expressions that are on the website. 5 of the 15 untranslatable Italian “words” are multi-words like “in boca al lupo” (totally translatable: “good luck”) and “rompere il cazzo” (literally “faire chier” in French).

htgb 5y ago

Oh, don't be dull ;) the explanation when selecting a language: > Concepts in Swedish That are difficult to easily and directly translate to other languages. Of course you can explain the concept in English, but you couldn't replace it with a simple translation when used in a sentence. Of course it's just a matter of degree since most words have slightly different connotations in different languages, but I found the lists entertaining and insightful. The quality of the entries vary, of course, but that's not an issue with the premise…

onemoresoop 5y ago

Well, everything can be explained in one way or another but the idea is that there's no direct translation to get the full meaning. My favorite is the German word schadenfreude which clearly has no direct translation into English. It means something like pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune. Notice how many words it takes to explain it...