5 ms·

I get hung up when people say there are terms that are "untranslatable". What does that mean? Is it just a series of sounds that people use in a certain context

by hbn 3y ago

I get hung up when people say there are terms that are "untranslatable". What does that mean? Is it just a series of sounds that people use in a certain context to convey a certain meaning, but the greater phrase can't be broken down into individual words, tokens, or concepts? Do we have anything like that in English?

Swizec 3y ago
> Do we have anything like that in English? "You are shit" vs "You are the shit". Explaining "the shit" to someone who's fluent in English but not culturally fluent in American is almost impossible. There's a qualitative difference between "You are very good" or "You are the best" and "You are the shit". They're not exactly synonyms. Another good example: Dude or Guy as used in Californian.
- hbn 3y ago
  I wouldn't really say that's untranslatable though. I feel like you could pretty easily translate something like "you are poop" into any language and explain that in the English phrase, adding "the" is modern cultural slang that means it's "the best" instead. Or you skip all the context and just say it means "you're great", very easy translation. "Eres el mejor" - I just translated it into Spanish
  - TillE 3y ago
    Every language is built on a mountain of cultural context and assumptions. That's the part which is impossible to translate. You can translate the words but you're missing layers upon layers of subtle meaning.
    - hbn 3y ago
      Perhaps I'm just taking the word "untranslatable" more literally than some, but I think if you can explain the surrounding cultural context, you've translated it. Different scenarios require different methods of translation, sometimes you'll want something literal, and sometimes you can just translate the intent behind the words. As long as you can do that, I would consider it "translatable".
      - smallnamespace 3y ago
        A text in the original language would evoke a certain combination of feeling and understanding in the reader. A paragraph footnote might accurately convey the intended meaning but it won't evoke the same feelings. A good author or translator cares about both these things.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - Swizec 3y ago
    I don't speak Spanish so can't judge your translation, but I know that "you're great" and "you're the shit" feel different. The simplification drops a lot of implicit information and social signaling. It's that emotional and cultural baggage layered on top of words that's hard to translate. So for example in USA you can call someone "a benedict arnold". As an immigrant this means nothing to me. People tell me it means "bad". I understand the words, but there's no impact behind them because I lack the cultural background.
    - vunderba 3y ago
      That's not a lack of cultural background, that's merely a lack of knowledge around who Benedict Arnold was, and apparently somebody doing you a disservice by explaining that it's a synonym for bad. If somebody had first explained to you that Benedict Arnold was a well known traitor during the revolutionary war you'd have nearly the same context as your average American. It's hardly what I would call untranslatable. I'm sure you could find some poor sod who the public education system failed so terribly that Benedict Arnold is as equally opaque in America.
compiler-devel 3y ago
Writers use “untranslatable” as a device to evoke a vague mysticism surrounding a language. IMHO it lends a flavor of superiority over the reader which I find gauche.
- tsukikage 3y ago
  Phrases have properties other than their literal meaning. These can be both important to an author's intent, and hard to get across; in the same way that when someone fails to get a joke, you can likely explain it to their satisfaction but it's much harder to get them to actually find it funny - the punchiness and associations are part of what makes one laugh, and these become lost during extended explanation. You can explain the meaning of a text, sure, and for technical texts that may be all you need, but if the goal is not simply the transfer of dry information and the result fails to trigger the intended associations and emotions, your job as a translator is not yet done.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > Phrases have properties other than their literal meaning. These can be both important to an author's intent, and hard to get across; Personally I prefer footnotes in those situations. I'd rather have a few sentences that explain the nuance an author was trying to convey with their word choice that a native speaker would have picked up on rather than have a phrase thrown out entirely and replaced with some alternative localization that might be familiar in an effort to try to capture the same "feel" but barely comes close to what was actually said (if you're lucky).
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  You and your hoity-toity French words :) I get your irritation but I think it's also a way of signaling to the reader that the difficult word is heavily freighted with meaning that would be blindingly obvious to a native/fluent speaker but require a small essay to convey in English (and still wouldn't have the emotional impact) - linguistic operator overloading, if you will.
- vunderba 3y ago
stevenwoo 3y ago
I was reading the making of at the end of Roadside Picnic and the authors wrote there was no word stalker in the Russian language until they wrote their book and introduced the concept and word to Russian language. Maybe more properly a neologism.
resolutebat 3y ago
Everything is translatable, but some concepts are difficult to convey in a compact way in other languages, and Japanese has a ton of set phrases for situations that don't really have obvious counterparts in other languages. As an example, the author mentions otsukaresama, which is the set phrase to use if you've been driving for a long time with guests and have reached your destination (and many, many other situations). But having the driver thank their guests for their patience is basically not a thing in English, so how do you translate that? The literal translation, "honorable tired lord" (~ thank you for your effort/patience), is completely incomprehensible.
- hbn 3y ago
  I think that explanation proves perfectly that it can be translated. Depending on the context, you'd want either explanation. If you're learning Japanese you'd probably want the explanation of how and when it's used, and the literal words that compose it. But if you were translating a manga book and it used that phrase, you would probably just put "Ahh, we're finally here!" I think there's just something of a bastardized use of the word "untranslatable". As long as a language can convey abstract concepts, you should be able to translate anything into it.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    I think we actually agree here: it's not "untranslatable", it just does not translate easily or well. But regarding translating it as "we're finally here", that's not what it means: it's not an expression of satisfaction, it's acknowledging that to others that it's been a long trip for them.
  - bigstrat2003 3y ago
    I think when people say "untranslatable", there's an implied "without breaking the flow or losing nuance" there. Of course you can in principle translate anything into any language, it's sometimes impossible to translate something without either a lengthy digression, or giving up on translating the full nuance. Poetry is notoriously hard to translate because of stuff like that. I don't know that I would say this is a bastardization of the word, but I see where you're coming from.
jasonjei 3y ago
I think what the writer means to say is there is a cultural aspect to language for words that don’t have direct equivalents in other languages. Interestingly, Chinese colloquially refers to languages as the same as culture. For example, Chinese is 中文, literally Chinese culture; English 英文, English culture; Japanese 日文, Japanese culture. The suffix 文 signifies culture. There is also the word 語 and 語言 to signify language; this is more formal but without the connotation of culture. But my point is culture is indelibly tied to language.
- glandium 3y ago
  > The suffix 文 signifies culture. 文 has a broad meaning. Here it would be https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87#Pronunciation_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87#Pronunciation_1 8. (written) language. (as opposed to spoken language, which is what 語 is)
- hnfong 3y ago
  I hesitate to nitpick on you given your surname, but I haven't seen 中文 (or any other _文) referring to culture specifically, as opposed to language. My understanding is that 文 (in this context) refers to the written language, whereas 語 and 語言 refers to the spoken language. Which is why we say 寫中文 instead of 寫中語. 語 and 文 often gets mixed up, but the nitty-picky-correct way should be what I described. FWIW here in Hong Kong we have a term "兩文三語" which means two written (Chinese and English) and three spoken languages (Cantonese, Mandarin and English).
jwells89 3y ago
I think in cases like this, “untranslatable” is really shorthand for, “cannot be translated without loss of information and/precision”. Of course words can be massaged to produce a similar meaning, but conveyance of the entirety of the original meaning can be somewhere between difficult and impossible, particularly when one must be succinct and cannot use sprawling sentences to dial in the message. This is also why at its best, translation is a skill and an art. The same text can have significantly differing impacts readers depending on who’s translating.

by hbn 3y ago

Swizec 3y ago

> Do we have anything like that in English? "You are shit" vs "You are the shit". Explaining "the shit" to someone who's fluent in English but not culturally fluent in American is almost impossible. There's a qualitative difference between "You are very good" or "You are the best" and "You are the shit". They're not exactly synonyms. Another good example: Dude or Guy as used in Californian.

hbn 3y ago
I wouldn't really say that's untranslatable though. I feel like you could pretty easily translate something like "you are poop" into any language and explain that in the English phrase, adding "the" is modern cultural slang that means it's "the best" instead. Or you skip all the context and just say it means "you're great", very easy translation. "Eres el mejor" - I just translated it into Spanish
- TillE 3y ago
  Every language is built on a mountain of cultural context and assumptions. That's the part which is impossible to translate. You can translate the words but you're missing layers upon layers of subtle meaning.
  - hbn 3y ago
    Perhaps I'm just taking the word "untranslatable" more literally than some, but I think if you can explain the surrounding cultural context, you've translated it. Different scenarios require different methods of translation, sometimes you'll want something literal, and sometimes you can just translate the intent behind the words. As long as you can do that, I would consider it "translatable".
    - smallnamespace 3y ago
      A text in the original language would evoke a certain combination of feeling and understanding in the reader. A paragraph footnote might accurately convey the intended meaning but it won't evoke the same feelings. A good author or translator cares about both these things.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- Swizec 3y ago
  I don't speak Spanish so can't judge your translation, but I know that "you're great" and "you're the shit" feel different. The simplification drops a lot of implicit information and social signaling. It's that emotional and cultural baggage layered on top of words that's hard to translate. So for example in USA you can call someone "a benedict arnold". As an immigrant this means nothing to me. People tell me it means "bad". I understand the words, but there's no impact behind them because I lack the cultural background.
  - vunderba 3y ago
    That's not a lack of cultural background, that's merely a lack of knowledge around who Benedict Arnold was, and apparently somebody doing you a disservice by explaining that it's a synonym for bad. If somebody had first explained to you that Benedict Arnold was a well known traitor during the revolutionary war you'd have nearly the same context as your average American. It's hardly what I would call untranslatable. I'm sure you could find some poor sod who the public education system failed so terribly that Benedict Arnold is as equally opaque in America.

compiler-devel 3y ago

Writers use “untranslatable” as a device to evoke a vague mysticism surrounding a language. IMHO it lends a flavor of superiority over the reader which I find gauche.

tsukikage 3y ago
Phrases have properties other than their literal meaning. These can be both important to an author's intent, and hard to get across; in the same way that when someone fails to get a joke, you can likely explain it to their satisfaction but it's much harder to get them to actually find it funny - the punchiness and associations are part of what makes one laugh, and these become lost during extended explanation. You can explain the meaning of a text, sure, and for technical texts that may be all you need, but if the goal is not simply the transfer of dry information and the result fails to trigger the intended associations and emotions, your job as a translator is not yet done.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > Phrases have properties other than their literal meaning. These can be both important to an author's intent, and hard to get across; Personally I prefer footnotes in those situations. I'd rather have a few sentences that explain the nuance an author was trying to convey with their word choice that a native speaker would have picked up on rather than have a phrase thrown out entirely and replaced with some alternative localization that might be familiar in an effort to try to capture the same "feel" but barely comes close to what was actually said (if you're lucky).
anigbrowl 3y ago
You and your hoity-toity French words :) I get your irritation but I think it's also a way of signaling to the reader that the difficult word is heavily freighted with meaning that would be blindingly obvious to a native/fluent speaker but require a small essay to convey in English (and still wouldn't have the emotional impact) - linguistic operator overloading, if you will.
vunderba 3y ago

stevenwoo 3y ago

I was reading the making of at the end of Roadside Picnic and the authors wrote there was no word stalker in the Russian language until they wrote their book and introduced the concept and word to Russian language. Maybe more properly a neologism.

resolutebat 3y ago

Everything is translatable, but some concepts are difficult to convey in a compact way in other languages, and Japanese has a ton of set phrases for situations that don't really have obvious counterparts in other languages. As an example, the author mentions otsukaresama, which is the set phrase to use if you've been driving for a long time with guests and have reached your destination (and many, many other situations). But having the driver thank their guests for their patience is basically not a thing in English, so how do you translate that? The literal translation, "honorable tired lord" (~ thank you for your effort/patience), is completely incomprehensible.

hbn 3y ago
I think that explanation proves perfectly that it can be translated. Depending on the context, you'd want either explanation. If you're learning Japanese you'd probably want the explanation of how and when it's used, and the literal words that compose it. But if you were translating a manga book and it used that phrase, you would probably just put "Ahh, we're finally here!" I think there's just something of a bastardized use of the word "untranslatable". As long as a language can convey abstract concepts, you should be able to translate anything into it.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  I think we actually agree here: it's not "untranslatable", it just does not translate easily or well. But regarding translating it as "we're finally here", that's not what it means: it's not an expression of satisfaction, it's acknowledging that to others that it's been a long trip for them.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  I think when people say "untranslatable", there's an implied "without breaking the flow or losing nuance" there. Of course you can in principle translate anything into any language, it's sometimes impossible to translate something without either a lengthy digression, or giving up on translating the full nuance. Poetry is notoriously hard to translate because of stuff like that. I don't know that I would say this is a bastardization of the word, but I see where you're coming from.

jasonjei 3y ago

I think what the writer means to say is there is a cultural aspect to language for words that don’t have direct equivalents in other languages. Interestingly, Chinese colloquially refers to languages as the same as culture. For example, Chinese is 中文, literally Chinese culture; English 英文, English culture; Japanese 日文, Japanese culture. The suffix 文 signifies culture. There is also the word 語 and 語言 to signify language; this is more formal but without the connotation of culture. But my point is culture is indelibly tied to language.

glandium 3y ago
> The suffix 文 signifies culture. 文 has a broad meaning. Here it would be https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87#Pronunciation_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%96%87#Pronunciation_1 8. (written) language. (as opposed to spoken language, which is what 語 is)
hnfong 3y ago
I hesitate to nitpick on you given your surname, but I haven't seen 中文 (or any other _文) referring to culture specifically, as opposed to language. My understanding is that 文 (in this context) refers to the written language, whereas 語 and 語言 refers to the spoken language. Which is why we say 寫中文 instead of 寫中語. 語 and 文 often gets mixed up, but the nitty-picky-correct way should be what I described. FWIW here in Hong Kong we have a term "兩文三語" which means two written (Chinese and English) and three spoken languages (Cantonese, Mandarin and English).

jwells89 3y ago

I think in cases like this, “untranslatable” is really shorthand for, “cannot be translated without loss of information and/precision”. Of course words can be massaged to produce a similar meaning, but conveyance of the entirety of the original meaning can be somewhere between difficult and impossible, particularly when one must be succinct and cannot use sprawling sentences to dial in the message. This is also why at its best, translation is a skill and an art. The same text can have significantly differing impacts readers depending on who’s translating.