Wistfulness 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.
"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)
It 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.
Some 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.
That'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)
I'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?
> 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.
I don’t think that’s an accurate translation at all!
Skinning a cat is not a common thing. It’s not a normal food for English speakers, so the phrase carries some sense that what you’re doing is unusual.
It’s usually applied to a situation completely unrelated to skinning or otherwise preparing food, so it carries some sense of absurdity.
Most people using the phrase have never skinned anything, so there’s (usually!) a sense of ignorance on both sides.
Your translation brings none of that.
If I were to translate that idiom back to English and aim for accuracy, it would be something like, “what you’re doing is unusual, and neither of us have experience doing it, and the way you’re doing it is different than the ways I have heard of, but I suppose there’s more than one valid way to do it.” Which, I think, fits the spirit of the other examples - a very short expression that carries tons of unspoken cultural context with it, to the point that there isn’t a direct translation.
The usage of the phrase is in no way contingent on the subject activity being unusual or a lack of experience for either party, your reading of it is far too literal.
Fwiw I’ve never read that deep into it. I have mostly experienced it as a response to a failed attempt at something and a new approach is needed. Less so, it is used to acknowledge that a problem can have alternative solutions.
As a native English speaker, I personally never really thought about those implications you just described. I would use that phrase for any situation with multiple options, not just an unusual one. Maybe I’m using it wrong?
I don't think so. Whenever I've heard the phrase it literally means "There are multiple valid solutions for a given problem" with no further connotations beyond a bit of absurdist humour.
As also a native English speaker, I don't believe there's any implied unusuality in the "skinning a cat" phrase. It really is just "there's more than one way."
I've come across different etymologies for this phrase. The first referenced use I've seen is from 1840 American humorist Seba Smith in her short story The Money Diggers when she wrote: “As it is said, ‘There are more ways than one to skin a cat,’ so are there more ways than one of digging for money”.[0]
This Economist article[1] posits that it is actually slang for sexual intercourse based on the phrase "skin the cat"[2] first recorded in 1837 being a euphemism for it. This interpretation would also fit with the above quote. The same article also points out that:
'And the rather violent act of skinning a cat is no easy thing, says John Youngaitis, a taxidermist in New York. “There is not more than one way to skin a cat.”'
From[0] we can also see that in 1678 English naturalist John Ray said in his “Collection of English Proverbs”: “There are more ways to kill a dog than hanging”.
So it seems it is possible that the contemporary phrase exists to change a less common activity for a more common one. In this case use of the idiom would not convey the sense of doing something unusual.
Only FYI, in Italian it is "Cencio dice male di straccio", vaguely translatable to "Mop speaking ill of rag".
Many proverbs in different languages have a common meaning but a different way to "deliver" it, I always find amusing how a differnt language/culture gets to the same point with completely different means.
I don't know about other languages, but when a friend asked me this question for portuguese a long time ago, I came up with "pet, "firetruck" and "sitcom" as examples. The first two translate to a noun plus an adjective ("animal de estimação" and "caminhão de bombeiro", respectively) and are not that interesting, but the last one has no translation whatsoever as far as I know, primarily because the very existence of sitcoms is sort of predicated on high variety of TV channels, whereas in smaller countries, there usually is only one or two very dominant ones.
Sitcom is a conjoining of two word: situational comedy. I wonder if that makes it a great example or a poor one. Now I’m curious of other conjoined words...
Edit: doh. I forgot there is a word for that: portmanteau.
FWIW, "situational comedy" is not something that a english speaking person would normally say (or even necessarily understand without context), and likewise the literal Portuguese translation ("comédia situacional") is extremely unlikely to evoke a mental image of "Friends" the way that "sitcom" does in English. If I had to attempt to explain what "sitcom" means to a brazilian person, I might instead say something like "série de comédia americana", which translates literally to "american comedy series".
In Japanese, there's the word "pasocon" (portmanteau of personal computer). Obviously here in the west, nobody would use that combination of words that way.
So I think which portmanteaus exist in a language is a function of the originating culture, which is an interesting phenomenon on its own.
Pasokon has been reborrowed by anime fans to refer to person-shaped personal computers, such as the androids seen in Chobits. Not a huge semantic drift, really.
The more interesting part of Japanese portmanteaus is the use of the first two mora from each word, where English speakers would try to fit head to tail, like “persoputer” or something. But I guess in an agglutinative language, the end of a word is a much fuzzier concept.
The UK has had sitcoms on the radio since the 50s and TV since the 60s, when there weren't many channels. I think it's more down to what the controllers of the channels want to put on it. Sitcoms can be extremely popular - Only Fools and Horses was watched by around 40% of the UK population at its peak.
Every language I've encountered has an equivalent word to "fuck" that basically takes the place of "most common swearword". In many languages, it's a literal translation - in other words, the equivalent of "fuck" is the most common swearword in many languages so translating it is probably not hard.
There's over 30 different pre- and post- fixes that can be added to any version of "fuck" (and Polish has several levels of vulgar verbs for "to fuck" coming from different roots: jebać, pierdolić, pieprzyć), and they each have slightly different primary and secondary meanings, for example:
najebać/napierdolić (się) = to get completely drunk
najebać/wjebać/wpieprzyć/wpierdolić (komuś) = to beat (someone) up
jebnąć (w coś) = to hit (into something)
podjebać/podpierdolić/podpieprzyć (coś) = to steal (something)
podpierdolić/podjebać (kogoś) = to backstab (someone)
spierdalać/spieprzać = to escape
spierdolić/zjebać/spieprzyć = to fuck up something (you had a chance and wasted it in spectacular manner)
wypierdolić/wyjebać/wypieprzyć (coś) = to throw (something) out
wypierdolić/wyjebać/wypieprzyć (się) = to fall spectacularly
wpierdolić (coś w/do czegoś) = to put (something in something)
pierdolnąć (coś na coś) = to put (something on something)
napierdolić/napieprzyć = to put too much of something
nawpierdalać/nawpieprzać (się) = to eat too much
wpierdolić (coś) = to eat a whole dish at once
odjebało/odpierdoliło (mu) = (he) become insane
wjebać/wpierdolić/wpieprzyć (się) = to get into inescapable situation because of your mistake
odjebać/odpierdolić (coś) = to do (something) crazy/amazing/unbeliveable
rozjebać/rozpierdolić/rozpieprzyć = to destroy something violently
zapierdolić/zajebać (kogoś) = to kill (someone)
the list goes on and on :)
The root word determines the level of vulgarity and the pre/post fixes determine the meaning. These prefixes also work with nonvulgar words, but average word only supports several of them, not all at once.
Most Slavic languages have similar constructions (but the exact meanings are often swapped).
You make the case that Polish uses affixes and inflection to convey meaning where English would use helper words. Fusional vs. analytic. That's not the same as the assertion that English curse words are pretty restrictive in comparison.
All of these words are variants of "to fuck", but instead of one root word (fuck) there's three (actually 4 - I forgot of "walić" - the least vulgar out of them) with different levels of vulgarity, and instead of less than 10 helper words there's dozens of pre- and post fixes-, and helper words also modify the meaning (to X someone vs to X something vs to X self can be completely unrelated).
I can translate each of English vulgar fuck+sth into several versions of Polish fuck+sth. For example "fuck off" would be
"odwal się" (mildly vulgar, but rude), "odpieprz się" (definitely vulgar) or "odpierdol się" (very vulgar). An in the meaning of "go out" "fuck off" would be "spieprzaj" or "spierdalaj".
But there's no direct equivalents in English for most of the examples I gave in my previous post. Yes you can say "I fucking ate too much", but that's the equivalent of "zjadłem, kurwa, za dużo", and not of any of these verbs. The nuance is lost :)
So I rest my case - cursing in English is very limited. Which isn't good or bad, just interesting how languages differ.
Not necessarily cultural significance, but my pet peeve about English are phrasal verbs, which are complex verbs constructed from a base verb and a preposition (most precisely, a postposition): get up, go on, take away etc. What makes them difficult is that the relation of the individual words in a phrase and its meaning is quite arbitrary -- it's interesting how you shut up a person but shut down a computer. :)
Phrasal verbs are indivisible in terms of their meaning, though, just like any other word. Aren't all verbs with no spaces also arbitrary? One must simply commit to memory. The hard part is avoiding the temptation of assuming constituent words determine the meaning precisely - a mistake you'd likely not make with an idiom or even an unassuming compound noun.
The harder thing with them is that the parts can be in different places in the sentence. "Clean up your room", "Clean your room up."
Note: Dutch does it worse (IMbiasedO, as a native English speaker learning it), where they're actually one word (like it were "upclean"), but the front part can break off and float to the end of the sentence much of the time.
Yep. German, which I'm learning, also unsurprisingly has this. I don't know that it's appreciably more difficult than the English two-word compounding given that the preposition can move around in all of these languages. I think it actually makes the conjugation of verbs, which have more endings at least in German, a bit more consistent.
I've noticed (although can't remember an example right now) that sometimes the sentence can have a slightly different meaning if the preposition goes to the end.
Another thing with English is that the word order is very important as it conveys a lot of meaning; in, for example, Slavic languages it is less critical as meaning relies heavily on various word forms.
I'm not familiar with all of them, but for the ones I am that shift is, at worst, very mild.
The order is still important in individual phrases: e.g. in Croatian, "dobar dan" (good day, a common greeting) would sound strange if the order is reversed. On the other hand "danas je dobar dan" (today is a good day), "dobar dan je danas" and "dobar dan danas je" are pretty much the same, in the descending order of common usage and "correctness". In all three examples the emphasis would be on the word indicating the point being made: "danas" if it's a good day as opposed to yesterday or another day, "je" if pointing out that it really is a good day, "dobar" (most commonly) in opposition to a bad (or neutral) day, and "dan" in opposition to a night.
To be clear, the sentence order is not completely irrelevant: it is commonly used (like in English) to turn a statement into a question (in speech usually with the emphasis shift). In the example above, "is today a good day?" would be "je (li) danas dobar dan?"
Apparently "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.
I'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.
> 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.
My normal English vocabulary includes more than 50 words for snow. So what. Snow is discussed often enough in some climates that it makes sense to have shortcuts to quickly describe the variations. In temperate climates you could get away with having to say "raindrops that have many small individual frozen frozen spots inside the mostly liquid drop." sleet is much shorter (and easier to understand for those who have encountered it.
>It's really just that we don't have a singular corresponding word, not that they can't be translated.
That kinda goes without saying, right? For the converse to be true there would have to be ideas that cannot be expressed in certain languages, as if they weren't "complete" analogously to Turing Completeness.
And yet there are many words in many languages that don't translate well or directly to/from English. French is a great example, where you have the word préciser which is a verb that, translated literally, means "to precise [something]" as in, to specify or to explain, but neither of those really capture the meaning of préciser. There really isn't a direct translation, but of course I can still make the same though understood in English or in French.
It's like with Kolmogorov complexity. The upper bound is translation from "word_x" into "book in your language that teaches you the other language and then says 'word_x'".
But just like Kolmogorov complexity the fact that you can technically translate anything and the change in length is finite - doesn't mean it's irrelevant in practice.
> It's really just that we don't have a singular corresponding word, not that they can't be translated.
Not to detract from your conclusion, but I think the current top comment, by jbay808, is a pretty good counterexample.
Of course, as per your point, they are able to offer a literal translation of what the word means. But without the cultural context, I can't actually use it. I'd have to explain what I meant so academically that the emotional weight would be lost to person I was talking to.
After living abroad for 10 years I think one of the biggest things I've learned is that translations don't quite work. The problem is the context and emotional framework in relation to the words.
For example "Viel Glück" can translate to "Good Luck" but what exactly is meant from this and how someone feels about me wishing it to them is quite different from Canada where I grew up.
At home it's a polite and kind of nice way to wish someone luck in what they're doing. Here it's often seen as a little sarcastic or teasing as there's a tiny culture implication that it means they didn't prepare enough.
There are massive amounts of this context or slight shading around the words which can completely change the contextural meaning of an exchange without changing anything about the literal translation.
Also, as to schadenfreude I really don't think German people identify with the idea of taking pleasure from another's misfortune. In fact most of the German speakers that I know would feel quite hurt or offended by the insinuation that they take pleasure from other's misfortune. It's more an acknowledgement that it happens, and a way to bring it into the conversation than something anyone would be proud of or want to do. Interestingly enough it's one of the most common borrowed words in English from German and is helpful to describe many situations. (Edit spelling)
> Here it's often seen as a little sarcastic or teasing as there's a tiny culture implication that it means they didn't prepare enough.
I have always thought the same thing about "Good for you" which I think would commonly be translated as "Schön für dich". You cannot possibly say that without sounding sarcastic.
Regarding "Viel Glück", I usually use "Viel Erfolg" when I'm being sincere.
Yes! That's a great example of words that have different meaning conveying a similar context. ("Viel Erfolg" meaning more like "Lots of success."/"I wish you success"). Even that though I feel has a bit of different subtext. Honestly that's the hardest thing about learning another language. Even after 10 years here I often say something which in meaning is exactly correct but still fails to convey what I wish due to some cultural subtext that I wasn't aware of.
>At home it's a polite and kind of nice way to wish someone luck in what they're doing. Here it's often seen as a little sarcastic or teasing as there's a tiny culture implication that it means they didn't prepare enough.
For what it's worth, "good luck" also has the sarcastic meaning in my mind, depending on context. I'm Canadian and only speak English.
> 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
That was meant as a joke, I suppose?
If not, you might remember that it is very easy in German to coin a word. For example, I have just invented the word "Papierwurst" (paper sausage). A perfectly fine German word. Die Papierwurst (sing.), die Papierwürste (plural), der Papierwurst (sing. dative),...
"It's why I love the word Papierwurst - not for what it means, but for the fact that Germans so readily identify with the idea of having sausages made of paper that they coined a word for the term."
What that poster is trying to tell you is that your example term is just as likely an accident of the structure of German language than some insight into the soul of the German people. The fact that schadenfreude is a German term could very well be that it's easier to make these sorts of terms in German than for any other reason.
Genocide is an English word. Does that mean that Americans in particular "readily identify" with ethnic cleansing?
English does have a word for schadenfreude -- "schadenfreude". I'd wager it's more used by english speakers than german ones these days. Once enough people know a "foreign" word and what it means, it's no longer a foreign word.
Every time one of these articles is published that talk about untranslatable concepts in foreign languages, it moves them closer to being loan words, and giving us a word to convey those concepts.
> Any word [Eskimos] have for snow can be described in a corresponding way in English using adjectives.
I can't speak for "Eskimos" and their languages but as a native Icelandic speaker I don't think you're quite grasping how specific jargon about everyday things like "snow" can be and how it can be wildly different from English.
For example, in Icelandic "words for snow" don't just encompass its properties, but also how it got there. E.g. "skafrenningur" is snow that's loose enough that it's being blown about by the wind in a certain manner, but such snow could be either wet or dry.
Of course you can explain concepts like that given sufficient time, but this also what it means for a language to not have a word for something, that its way of thinking about things doesn't align with another language.
Shoganai 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.
Otsukaresama 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.
Yeah 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.
That works well for some uses, but you sort of both have to be colleagues, and finishing up at the same time to use that. You can say "otsukaresama" to your colleague who is leaving before you to pick up their kids, or to your spouse when they get home from a long day, so it's a bit more flexible. It's just a nice, non-judgemental way to acknowledge someone's efforts.
Does it have to be a single word or phrase for all uses?
That's the thing I fail to understand with these words/phrases that are hard to translate. Sure, if you need to work it into a pun or joke you almost by definition need to have a single word for two different situations, but for everyday life, I don't understand why not two or three similar phrases suffice, one for each context.
It's just that, I've had times where I'd have a strong urge to say otsukaresama to someone, and trip over myself for lack of any appropriate way to say it. Usually those would be cases where none of the translations listed here work; not "let's call it a day" because I'm still working, not "good effort" because it's clear in the context that I have no knowledge of their level of effort and anyway that sounds like what a coach would say after practice. It just sometimes doesn't have any good translation.
Only a bit tongue-in-cheek - "It's Miller time" seems to fit. It's an 80's era ad campaign. The basic idea is, you've been working hard, time for a break, kick back, drink a beer, etc.
It was also used (in the cultural sense) when you've been banging your head on a problem, a co-workers says "It's Miller time?" meaning, perhaps it's time to stop and relax, and do something else for a while?
Or, when coming home, your roommate might way "It's Miller Time!", meaning "you've maybe had a tough day at work, welcome back to a place where you can relax." This may or may not be accompanied by a can of beer.
Yeah, out of all possible words and phrases they went with しょうがない... Even "whatever" comes close enough. For languages as far apart as Japanese and English, there is no shortage of words that will lose their nuances in translation - to what extent can be argued, but language definitely is tied to culture.
I think お疲れ様 is the phrase/word I miss the most in English, and I often catch myself wanting to say it to a non-Japanese speaker.
Conversely, "interesting" is a word I have been feeling a lack for in Japanese. As in "That's interesting" after hearing something.
Isn't "naruhodo" close enough? It's often translated as "I see", but the acknowledging filler variation is usually just "un", whereas naruhodo expresses a mild level of surprise.
Depending on context it can be! But consider something like "Isn't it really interesting how X went down?". なるほど is also pretty casual, and can also imply to me new information.
I don't want to imply I find it amusing or something positive - it might be something sad or atrocious (面白い is out).
I don't want to imply I want to learn more or am deeply invested in it (興味ぶかい also out).
That pretty much exhausts the available options when I've asked Japanese friends.
そうですか/そうでしょうか with a change in tone is pretty much what you’re looking for. I know it directly translates to “is that so”, but the meaning is more or less the same.
The other big one I'd add is yoroshiku (+onegai-shimasu), which in the abstract conveys that the speaker anticipates some kind of help or cooperation from the listener. It can translate as anything from "looking forward to working with you" to "Please help, I'm counting on you", or even "I'm leaving this in your hands, get it done" depending on context, tone, honorifics and so on.
Just to add to its versatility: It is also used in the same part of a conversation where introduction has just been done and we would say “please to meet you” - in subtitles often translated to the cringe worthy “please be kind to me”
I think the closest to otsukaresama might be something like "get some rest", though I admit the original doesn't necessarily imply anything about tiredness and can be used with roughly the same frequency as a greeting.
Another class of untranslatable japanese words that I find interesting are onomatopoeias. The language has a ridiculous number of them! "Pikachu", for example, is a famous example that is a combination of the onomatopoeias for sparkling (pika) and a mouse's squeaking sound (chu).
Something else from Japanese that's hard to translate is yoroshikuonegaishimasu (よろしくお願いします). I've seen it translated as "pleased to meet you", "you can count on us", and "my life is in your hands" in a single episode of a TV show! I just tried it on Google Translate and it gets translated as "Thank you".
A related favorite Japanese word of mine is "sasuga" (lit. "as one would expect") - a compliment that's mild not because the work was merely adequate, but because you trusted the person to meet your high expectations to begin with. I'm a native English speaker and despair for good ways to convey both of these attitudes in code review.
During a review the following verdict is given: “Its good. In fact it’s better than good: it is good enough”
I find it so funny because it really plays with our normal use of “good enough” as “not good, but useable” but of course it is entirely possible to make something that is good but not good enough
I always felt like, how ganbatte almost translates to good luck, as it’s a set phrase you’d use everywhere English would use it, it still has a completely different connotation.
Good luck is out of your control, while ganbatte is cheering for you to do your best and the phrase can therefore be used even broader than good luck.
In a similar vein I always felt like otsukaresama somehow appreciates the effort that was put in to the work, where “good work” appreciates the result.
The 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.
> 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.
You'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'
The question is, if ancient Chinese had solved the problem in a more straightforward way, why did it then evolve to the more complex form where classifiers are mandatory?
Frankly, I don't know the answer. Here is some common knowledge for Chinese you might be interested in, and possibly remotely related to this issue. But I'm by no means an expert, so please take a grain of salt.
> why did it then evolve to the more complex form where classifiers are mandatory?
Simple is not necessarily easy. The ancient Chinese is compact but not easy to learn.
The Chinese, especially the literary/classical Chinese[0] (as opposed to vernacular Chinese[1]) was very scholar oriented. It's pretty bizarre to the rest of the world because historically the government and scholars actually have strong influences and even controls over the language itself.
There were even many times like 'Hey, you know what? We believe the language is not good enough, and we're going to fix it!', and officers and scholars were assigned to refactor the language. The recent one leads to the traditional and the simplified Chinese diverse from each other. According to the legend, Cangjie[2] invented the Chinese characters, and it more or less becomes traditions, or at least the legend could help the government claims to refactor the language.
The ancients scholars tried to make the language compact and precise. However, the cost is the language is pretty cryptic. If you know a lot of idioms (usually 4 syllables), you would find they don't really make any sense unless you know the whole historical events/stories behind them.
Scholars from Korea, Japan, and Vietnam knew and love Chinese. Many of them tried to evangelize the language to their own people. But they never made it to the average people, though the were many strong influences till the modern days.
> Typically languages tend to evolve to be simpler.
Also, interestingly, the redundancy of the Chinese language actually largely increased over time. My personal take is it tends to be easier rather than simpler.
Some linguistics split Chinese into 3 periods: the old Chinese[3], the middle Chinese[4], and the old Mandarin[5] (the translation is 近代汉语 - is 'the near modern Chinese' if we translate it directly back to English). The middle Chinese period starts from the Northern and Southern dynasties (start from 420) to the Tang dynasty (end at 907).
In the beginning, during the old Chinese period, Chinese people tend to create new characters/syllables over new words (which might combined characters). And that's why the Chinese have so many characters nowadays. But the trend is not sustainable. To be frank, Chinese people may remember thousands of Characters, but they might not remember hundreds of thousands if the trends persist. Also from the syllables perspective, there would be not enough combinations.
So the middle Chinese period, the trend stopped and people started to combine two characters/syllables together for a word, this is especially common in vernacular Chinese. The vernacular Chinese during the middle Chinese period is actually pretty close to the old and modern Mandarin.
Also, Chinese people more or less having OCD on making characters/syllables in the same length so they would sound perfect, especially look perfect (Yes!) - poems usually have 5/7/9 syllables for each sentence. Words and idioms usually consist of 2 or 4 syllables. If a lot of words are made with 2 syllables, they rather make them all 2 syllables.
So the original common words would have a lot of redundancy, for example, 房(house)屋(room), actually refers to 房(house).
Back to the original question, my personal guess is there was no standard way of classify things, once classifier was more and more useful (because there were going to be more 'cup or bucket' issue as the society develops), the OCD Chinese people want to add fallback so it can make the expression balanced just like how they squeeze sentence 5/7/9 and words to 2/4 syllables. So it would be like 'two pairs of gold bowls, and forty grasps of golden keys'. But that's only ...
I 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.
You mean besides being one of the best ways to spend an afternoon or an evening: After a meal talking and laughing away the time with friends with nice fresh drinks always available? When we go out for lunch during the weekend or on vacations if we go at 13:00 nobody expects to leave anywhere before the middle of the afternoon. Dinners often go well into the night too.
Going to a restaurant with friends is first and foremost a social event, the food is just incidental.
Regarding 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.
I 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.
Given 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.
Or - reversed - "non proprio" means more than anything else "not exactly" (meaning something that is similar, almost, but not quite what was expected) BUT "non è proprio il caso" means "absolutely not" or "definitely not".
It'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.
Can 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).
A 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."
No. 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.
I 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...'.
Ni. 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.
Ah 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
Our 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...
It 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”)
From 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.
I 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.
> 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.
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.
> 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?
Such 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.
It 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.
Such words are the nightmares of people who translate fiction.
Translators that work dubbing movies have harder constraints and seldom fail to make sense, only when there're wordplays or words that sound similar to others...
Compare "Fuck" said with mad, resigned and amazed voice. It's 3 different words in some languages.
Or compare a line "Our hero heard someone crying 'I loved her' from the crowd". In some languages depending what grammatical gender is the person shouting the word ending in 'love' is different.
English books often skip that information, so the translator has to deduce or ask the author who was shouting that line. In a movie you know because you can see that person or hear the voice.
I remember reading one example of this in an interview with the Swedish translator of the Harry Potter books. At some point a grandmother (I believe Neville's) is mentioned. In Swedish, it is impossible (at least while sounding remotely natural) to say "grandmother" without specifying whether it's the maternal or paternal grandmother. The translator had to just guess, and ended up being wrong when more context was given in a later book.
That is very generous. Looking at Swedish subtitles of Hollywood movies I often cringe at idioms translated word by word rather than to common Swedish equivalents. These make no sense if you don't happen to know the English already.
When watching dubbed things (which in Swedish means exclusively children's shows) I often hear things which make little sense until I suddenly realise there's an English sentence with similar structure that would make sense in this context.
edit: In other words, translations often fail to make sense when poorly done, and a lot of them are.
In Spanish, most of the excesive literal translations happened 50 or 100 years ago, so they're part of the language now. Noboby blinks when somebody says "my name is" translated word by word. It used to be extremely unnatural.
Sometimes I enable English subtitles keeping the dubbed Spanish audio and it's often well done. There is very talented people working on the translations, giving the right tone to conversations.
I remember watching, in a youth hostel back in the 80s, an Aussie movie dubbed into German.
My German was minimal, but when a swagman got out of a semi that had just given him a lift, he said "Danke Comarade" and I realized that he said "Thanks mate" which has greater connotations and meaning than just a thank you.
They also aren't translations, a lot of the time, in the sense that they express the same meaning as the original text. Often they're simply replacements that are compatible with the action on the screen.
> you have to scramble for alternatives which inevitably lose subtle shades of meaning
That would be "difficult to translate", then, not "untranslatable", no? As for breaking the flow of the text, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to do that anyway translating Russian to English.
>That would be "difficult to translate", then, not "untranslatable", no?
Where would you draw the line? No culture has a concept which is literally unexplainable to any other.
Translators could potentially give meaning-for-meaning accurate translations if it were desirable, or possible, to give each word a paragraph of qualifiers and contexts. But translators are restricted to at least trying to preserve the structure of the translated work, and for words that means trying to pick a one- or two-word substitute.
Some words just don't have an accurate substitute. You can easily pick translations which are "not wrong", but none would be correct. What would you call those words, if not "untranslatable"?
Word puns are sometimes impossible to translate (at least without teaching the other person the part of language it depends on).
Example:
A Pole, a German and a Russian meet the devil. He locks each one of them in a cell, gives them two small marbles each and tells them they have a month to impress him with them, or he'll eat them otherwise. So he comes back after a month and sees that the German's cell is full of complicated mathematical formulas and one marble is perfectly balanced on top of the other. He nods his head and moves on to the Russian's cell to see him doing one-handed pushups while juggling the marbles with the other hand. The devil nods again and moves to the Pole's cell, only to see that he lost one marble and broke the other one.
Is it funny? Because it's pretty good in Polish and I don't know how to translate it withotu longwinded explanation.
The problem is that the word "zepsuć" used for "breaking the marble" means "to spoil" or "to make something nonfunctional without destroying it physically". In English "break" is overloaded and people assume other meaning.
So the Pole in the joke managed to make the marble stop doing what marbles do without damaging it.
I don't know what this says about my level of humor, but I chuckled even at the English version before reading the rest of your comment. After reading the rest, I chuckled again. :)
I don't know if it translated exactly right (also can't get my head around a spoiled, unbroken marble) but it still made me laugh. What is the stereotype that makes Poles do things which are impressive in a totally irrational way?
I don't think it depicts (conveys, draws from?) a specific stereotype. It's just self-disparaging humour.
There's an opposite self-stereotype, captured by the phrase "Polak potrafi" (a Pole can do it), which actually emphasizes resourcefulness as a national trait. Although it's often tainted with irony, or at least implies that the creativity employed isn't really by the books, etc.
But, I enjoy prozd's short sketch on "official subs vs fansubs" in this regard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNxgHTWIlo
(It demonstrates translation where an 'official' one is lossy, but the fansub tries to be more faithful).
It doesn't just mean afternoon. It's not only a temporal noun, it's related to an activity.
You wouldn't enter the office and wish your coworkers "buena sobremesa". Or if you did, they would probably understand that you are mocking them for being idle at work.
Learn what? The link just goes into a long bit of semantics stemming from the author's personal dislike of how other people use "untranslatable" as a word. There's nothing to "learn" from it, because it's a nothingburger.
Meanwhile, most if not all language teaching that goes on today still does treat translation as bijection. Students are constantly asked to remember "the word for X in language Y". While that might be a good-enough approximation, it also majorly encourages the idea that that's how translation itself works - so people might be forgiven trying to set the record straight by pointing out that many words are "untranslatable" that way.
> the author's personal dislike of how other people use "untranslatable" as a word
Language Log isn't a personal blog, it's a group blog run by some fairly distinguished linguists, and their[1] point about bijection is coherently argued and deserves consideration.
> most if not all language teaching that goes on today still does treat translation as bijection
I'm not convinced - beyond beginner-level one quickly realizes that translation is not one-to-one. Is there a citation for this?
>I'm not convinced - beyond beginner-level one quickly realizes that translation is not one-to-one.
You don't believe the vast majority of language teaching happens at the beginner level? I certainly do, and it would be most people's only first-hand exposure to any kind of translation.
I should clarify that by beginner-level I meant "alphabet book level". A for apple, B for balai, C for conejo, etc.
At beginner level language teaching, beyond the first few lessons, you run into words that are difficult to translate bijectively, e.g. ser/estar while learning Spanish from English.
Linus Sebastian from LTT uses it a lot, so it already made it to Canada. I think the closest translation to English (yeah, I know) would be "non-issue".
I think it has its genesis in an old Wendys ad campaign “where’s the beef” poking fun at Macdonald’s.
So in the news it was popularized when talking heads surmised the whole “Russia collusion” was a “nothingburger”. It had no substance —harking back to “where’s the beef?”
That view only makes sense if you view translation as purely an encoding process: "let's express in language B exactly the same meaning as in language A". Then sure, you can always do it (as far as I know) if you are willing to accept an unbounded encoding length. Even in a language from an isolated tribe who has never seen a train, you could painstakingly describe all the details of a plain.
However, that seems to me like an over-reductionistic view of translation. Typically, in all except highly technical contexts, you don't only want to convey meaning, you want to keep at least a modicum of naturalness, the feeling that your translated sentence is something that a native speaker of language B might really say.
With that in view, I think it makes sense to say that there are words that are untranslatable in practice. Meaning is not lost, naturalness is.
For example, to say "facepalm" in Spanish you would have to say something like "I place my hand on my face in frustration". Does that convey the meaning? Sure. Has any Spanish speaker ever said it? I highly doubt it, except for the joke of trying to translate something that just doesn't lend itself to it.
Right, but it feels like you're already moving the goalposts slightly. The word "facepalm" is rarely meant to convey the literal act of slapping the forehead, but rather to communicate the resigned frustration associated with it. Surely, also Spanish people have ways to express resigned frustration?
Obviously, if you are using it in an internet forum you're probably not literally facepalming, just as if you use "lol" you're not laughing out loud, but even in these cases, I don't think that means that you can entirely decouple the word from the gesture. At least for me, when I read the word, what I imagine is someone facepalming. There are several other ways to express resigned frustration (a sigh, a shake of the head) but they are not the same even if they are ways of expressing the same.
It's very rarely used to convey the literal act. The link you posted is an exception, and is noteworthy exactly because of that. When the word is used, it's almost always meant to convey the feeling.
Nothing was "demolished", nothing can be "demolished" in this regard, as many of the people who speak and read two or more languages fluently will attest.
For one thing, many of the swear words/expressions cannot be translated, not even by using more than one word/a few words, there are languages where one can fill entire books with swear-words/expressions (one of them is Romanian, which I speak natively, I've heard the same thing about Russian or Hungarian) and there are languages where swear words/expressions are a lot less diverse (English is the example I know best).
Of course, one can try to naively translate the "băga-mi-aș pula în morții mamii tale!" into the English "I will insert my dick into your mother's dead people", but this naive translation doesn't (can't) catch the word inversion "băga-mi-aș" (from "mi-aș băga") which makes the whole action sound a lot more dynamic and direct in Romanian, plus the word "pula" has a lot more meanings and context in Romanian compared to the simpler uses of "dick" in English, and last but not least the Anglo world seems not to care about one's dead people as much as we Romanians do (and I think we're not the only ones), and as such mentioning some other person's dead close relatives in a derogatory way is seen at most as quaint (while "morții tăi!"/"your dead people!" in Romanian is oftentimes used as a swear expression all by itself, I know I use it frequently).
And this before we get to all the diminutives/suffixes that can be added to any word that is part of a swear expression (and not only) in a language like Romanian, a feature that is absent from most of the English language. For example the mentioned above example can very be easily changed into:
> "băga-mi-aș pula în morții mămițicii tale!"
with the "mamii" to "mămățicii" change (basically from "your mother" to "your little mother", where "little" actually means "more loved"/closer to the person being addressed) giving the whole swear expression a new other, even more personal feeling.
My Hungarian friend has often complained about how poor English is in comparison to his native Hungarian as a language for swearing. From your example, I'd say Hungarian swearing is stylistically similar to Romanian.
He also told me about his favorite untranslatable Hungarian word, "bezzeg", which has to be handled on a case-by-case basis when translating into English.
Fluent, inventive and artful swearing is the highest mastery of foreign language to be achieved. If your friend thinks english or any other language lacks expletives or ways to combine them for maximum effect, I am sorry, but your friend knows fuck-all about cultures, languages, and people in general. It is even possible that his mother was a hamster and his father smelled of elderberries (i'm of course, saying that in jest!)
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.
Nothing 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.
From 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).
> And this before we get to all the diminutives/suffixes that can be added to any word that is part of a swear expression (and not only) in a language like Romanian, a feature that is absent from most of the English language
English has many diminutives as well, mother is considered rather formal. Mum, mummy, mumsie, mam, all convey different semantic levels of closeness.
The point linguists try to make is that 'untranslatable' doesn't exist, based on what they've seen thus far. To use a JS metaphor, some language features may require a semantic polyfill to translate a particular word (and some of these "polyfills" will be larger than others). But literally nothing in any human language is untranslatable, and this has to do with fairly fundamental issues of neuroscience and biology.
If we did find untranslatable concepts in Earth-based human languages, it'd have very interesting implications about the nature of human brains.
Maybe it would be easier to see how pedantic this discussion is if the title were just "Words that don't easily translate". By my reading, you just did a pretty good job of translating that epithet, though it took you many words. I suspect you could do an even more precise job with even more words.
While others have already written great replies arguing for untranslatability, I'll add my own views as well (as a trilingual, non-native English speaker).
I think what's immediately wrong in your argument is equating untranslatability with exact one-word equivalent. Then instead of arguing against untranslatability, you argue that translation isn't just equating word for word. I agree with that. Most everyone I think agrees with that.
What's missing from that view is that different cultures mean different ways of viewing and experiencing the world, which necessitates different ways of expressing oneself, that is, different words and expressions. Words and expressions carrying a "cultural weight" so to speak, containing deep meaningful connections with its people and their history.
A talented person with excellent knowledge of two languages and great skill using at least one of them (being themselves an author, or a poet) can translate great works from the other language. And yet the resulting work may not be able to convey every nuance of the original.
Try it if you speak another language and read both the translated version and the original of a great work of literature and you'll see what I mean.
> Try it if you speak another language and read both the translated version and the original of a great work of literature and you'll see what I mean.
Agreed.
There's an even simpler way to experience this: jokes and puns. Often times, they are untranslatable because their literal meaning is nonsensical and all of its expressiveness comes from timing/context, play on words and/or a local cultural references. By the time you've explained a joke, it has already lost its effect.
There's a curious story among diplomatic translators where in a live diplomatic meeting, one of the parties blurted out a joke and the interpreter, attempting to accurately set the mood, translated it as "X just blurted out an untranslatable joke, please laugh heartily"!
I don't even see why we need to bring multiple languages into the picture. Different people have (sometimes not so) subtle different understandings of the meanings of different words. By a similar notion of "untranslatability", I feel like similar arguments would basically mean that a single language is untranslatable between two native speakers.
"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!
Everything 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.
As a native speaker of polish language and a person who learns english for 20 years and actively uses it every day with native speakers - i can say the same :) agree to disagree
I 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.
In 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.
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.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 243 ms ] threadI’d also add the Portuguese word “saudade”, which is a sense of yearning or of missing someone/something - often hard to convey in English.
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.
Though you can say that something (or even someone) "fa figura", if it looks better than what it is really made of.
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
"There are multiple valid solutions for a given problem"
Skinning a cat is not a common thing. It’s not a normal food for English speakers, so the phrase carries some sense that what you’re doing is unusual.
It’s usually applied to a situation completely unrelated to skinning or otherwise preparing food, so it carries some sense of absurdity.
Most people using the phrase have never skinned anything, so there’s (usually!) a sense of ignorance on both sides.
Your translation brings none of that.
If I were to translate that idiom back to English and aim for accuracy, it would be something like, “what you’re doing is unusual, and neither of us have experience doing it, and the way you’re doing it is different than the ways I have heard of, but I suppose there’s more than one valid way to do it.” Which, I think, fits the spirit of the other examples - a very short expression that carries tons of unspoken cultural context with it, to the point that there isn’t a direct translation.
"There are multiple valid solutions for a given problem"
This Economist article[1] posits that it is actually slang for sexual intercourse based on the phrase "skin the cat"[2] first recorded in 1837 being a euphemism for it. This interpretation would also fit with the above quote. The same article also points out that:
'And the rather violent act of skinning a cat is no easy thing, says John Youngaitis, a taxidermist in New York. “There is not more than one way to skin a cat.”'
From[0] we can also see that in 1678 English naturalist John Ray said in his “Collection of English Proverbs”: “There are more ways to kill a dog than hanging”.
So it seems it is possible that the contemporary phrase exists to change a less common activity for a more common one. In this case use of the idiom would not convey the sense of doing something unusual.
[0] https://www.bnd.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/answer-man/arti...
[1] https://www.economist.com/prospero/2013/10/09/shooting-skinn...
[2] https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/f3i7zgi
Many proverbs in different languages have a common meaning but a different way to "deliver" it, I always find amusing how a differnt language/culture gets to the same point with completely different means.
Edit: doh. I forgot there is a word for that: portmanteau.
FWIW, "situational comedy" is not something that a english speaking person would normally say (or even necessarily understand without context), and likewise the literal Portuguese translation ("comédia situacional") is extremely unlikely to evoke a mental image of "Friends" the way that "sitcom" does in English. If I had to attempt to explain what "sitcom" means to a brazilian person, I might instead say something like "série de comédia americana", which translates literally to "american comedy series".
In Japanese, there's the word "pasocon" (portmanteau of personal computer). Obviously here in the west, nobody would use that combination of words that way.
So I think which portmanteaus exist in a language is a function of the originating culture, which is an interesting phenomenon on its own.
The more interesting part of Japanese portmanteaus is the use of the first two mora from each word, where English speakers would try to fit head to tail, like “persoputer” or something. But I guess in an agglutinative language, the end of a word is a much fuzzier concept.
Hmm, I think abbreviations are more common. Case in point, personal computer is usually abbreviated to PC.
But PC nowadays has a connotation of a non-Apple computer. Just goes to show how much nuance culture bring into the picture!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitcom
Example: https://img.joemonster.org/mg/albums/userpics/10001/prefix.j...
There's over 30 different pre- and post- fixes that can be added to any version of "fuck" (and Polish has several levels of vulgar verbs for "to fuck" coming from different roots: jebać, pierdolić, pieprzyć), and they each have slightly different primary and secondary meanings, for example:
najebać/napierdolić (się) = to get completely drunk
najebać/wjebać/wpieprzyć/wpierdolić (komuś) = to beat (someone) up
jebnąć (w coś) = to hit (into something)
podjebać/podpierdolić/podpieprzyć (coś) = to steal (something)
podpierdolić/podjebać (kogoś) = to backstab (someone)
spierdalać/spieprzać = to escape
spierdolić/zjebać/spieprzyć = to fuck up something (you had a chance and wasted it in spectacular manner)
wypierdolić/wyjebać/wypieprzyć (coś) = to throw (something) out
wypierdolić/wyjebać/wypieprzyć (się) = to fall spectacularly
wpierdolić (coś w/do czegoś) = to put (something in something)
pierdolnąć (coś na coś) = to put (something on something)
napierdolić/napieprzyć = to put too much of something
nawpierdalać/nawpieprzać (się) = to eat too much
wpierdolić (coś) = to eat a whole dish at once
odjebało/odpierdoliło (mu) = (he) become insane
wjebać/wpierdolić/wpieprzyć (się) = to get into inescapable situation because of your mistake
odjebać/odpierdolić (coś) = to do (something) crazy/amazing/unbeliveable
rozjebać/rozpierdolić/rozpieprzyć = to destroy something violently
zapierdolić/zajebać (kogoś) = to kill (someone)
the list goes on and on :)
The root word determines the level of vulgarity and the pre/post fixes determine the meaning. These prefixes also work with nonvulgar words, but average word only supports several of them, not all at once.
Most Slavic languages have similar constructions (but the exact meanings are often swapped).
I can translate each of English vulgar fuck+sth into several versions of Polish fuck+sth. For example "fuck off" would be "odwal się" (mildly vulgar, but rude), "odpieprz się" (definitely vulgar) or "odpierdol się" (very vulgar). An in the meaning of "go out" "fuck off" would be "spieprzaj" or "spierdalaj".
But there's no direct equivalents in English for most of the examples I gave in my previous post. Yes you can say "I fucking ate too much", but that's the equivalent of "zjadłem, kurwa, za dużo", and not of any of these verbs. The nuance is lost :)
So I rest my case - cursing in English is very limited. Which isn't good or bad, just interesting how languages differ.
Note: Dutch does it worse (IMbiasedO, as a native English speaker learning it), where they're actually one word (like it were "upclean"), but the front part can break off and float to the end of the sentence much of the time.
I've noticed (although can't remember an example right now) that sometimes the sentence can have a slightly different meaning if the preposition goes to the end.
Another thing with English is that the word order is very important as it conveys a lot of meaning; in, for example, Slavic languages it is less critical as meaning relies heavily on various word forms.
The order is still important in individual phrases: e.g. in Croatian, "dobar dan" (good day, a common greeting) would sound strange if the order is reversed. On the other hand "danas je dobar dan" (today is a good day), "dobar dan je danas" and "dobar dan danas je" are pretty much the same, in the descending order of common usage and "correctness". In all three examples the emphasis would be on the word indicating the point being made: "danas" if it's a good day as opposed to yesterday or another day, "je" if pointing out that it really is a good day, "dobar" (most commonly) in opposition to a bad (or neutral) day, and "dan" in opposition to a night.
To be clear, the sentence order is not completely irrelevant: it is commonly used (like in English) to turn a statement into a question (in speech usually with the emphasis shift). In the example above, "is today a good day?" would be "je (li) danas dobar dan?"
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.
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.
https://everything2.com/title/Finnish+words+for+snow
That kinda goes without saying, right? For the converse to be true there would have to be ideas that cannot be expressed in certain languages, as if they weren't "complete" analogously to Turing Completeness.
And yet there are many words in many languages that don't translate well or directly to/from English. French is a great example, where you have the word préciser which is a verb that, translated literally, means "to precise [something]" as in, to specify or to explain, but neither of those really capture the meaning of préciser. There really isn't a direct translation, but of course I can still make the same though understood in English or in French.
But just like Kolmogorov complexity the fact that you can technically translate anything and the change in length is finite - doesn't mean it's irrelevant in practice.
Not to detract from your conclusion, but I think the current top comment, by jbay808, is a pretty good counterexample.
Of course, as per your point, they are able to offer a literal translation of what the word means. But without the cultural context, I can't actually use it. I'd have to explain what I meant so academically that the emotional weight would be lost to person I was talking to.
For example "Viel Glück" can translate to "Good Luck" but what exactly is meant from this and how someone feels about me wishing it to them is quite different from Canada where I grew up.
At home it's a polite and kind of nice way to wish someone luck in what they're doing. Here it's often seen as a little sarcastic or teasing as there's a tiny culture implication that it means they didn't prepare enough.
There are massive amounts of this context or slight shading around the words which can completely change the contextural meaning of an exchange without changing anything about the literal translation.
Also, as to schadenfreude I really don't think German people identify with the idea of taking pleasure from another's misfortune. In fact most of the German speakers that I know would feel quite hurt or offended by the insinuation that they take pleasure from other's misfortune. It's more an acknowledgement that it happens, and a way to bring it into the conversation than something anyone would be proud of or want to do. Interestingly enough it's one of the most common borrowed words in English from German and is helpful to describe many situations. (Edit spelling)
I have always thought the same thing about "Good for you" which I think would commonly be translated as "Schön für dich". You cannot possibly say that without sounding sarcastic.
Regarding "Viel Glück", I usually use "Viel Erfolg" when I'm being sincere.
For what it's worth, "good luck" also has the sarcastic meaning in my mind, depending on context. I'm Canadian and only speak English.
That was meant as a joke, I suppose? If not, you might remember that it is very easy in German to coin a word. For example, I have just invented the word "Papierwurst" (paper sausage). A perfectly fine German word. Die Papierwurst (sing.), die Papierwürste (plural), der Papierwurst (sing. dative),...
"It's why I love the word Papierwurst - not for what it means, but for the fact that Germans so readily identify with the idea of having sausages made of paper that they coined a word for the term."
Papierwurst is a word you just made up that doesn't mean anything.
You're just here trying to let people know that you know German grammar. That's fine, but your example isn't comparable or relevant.
Genocide is an English word. Does that mean that Americans in particular "readily identify" with ethnic cleansing?
Every time one of these articles is published that talk about untranslatable concepts in foreign languages, it moves them closer to being loan words, and giving us a word to convey those concepts.
I can't speak for "Eskimos" and their languages but as a native Icelandic speaker I don't think you're quite grasping how specific jargon about everyday things like "snow" can be and how it can be wildly different from English.
For example, in Icelandic "words for snow" don't just encompass its properties, but also how it got there. E.g. "skafrenningur" is snow that's loose enough that it's being blown about by the wind in a certain manner, but such snow could be either wet or dry.
Of course you can explain concepts like that given sufficient time, but this also what it means for a language to not have a word for something, that its way of thinking about things doesn't align with another language.
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.
That's the thing I fail to understand with these words/phrases that are hard to translate. Sure, if you need to work it into a pun or joke you almost by definition need to have a single word for two different situations, but for everyday life, I don't understand why not two or three similar phrases suffice, one for each context.
It's just that, I've had times where I'd have a strong urge to say otsukaresama to someone, and trip over myself for lack of any appropriate way to say it. Usually those would be cases where none of the translations listed here work; not "let's call it a day" because I'm still working, not "good effort" because it's clear in the context that I have no knowledge of their level of effort and anyway that sounds like what a coach would say after practice. It just sometimes doesn't have any good translation.
It was also used (in the cultural sense) when you've been banging your head on a problem, a co-workers says "It's Miller time?" meaning, perhaps it's time to stop and relax, and do something else for a while?
Or, when coming home, your roommate might way "It's Miller Time!", meaning "you've maybe had a tough day at work, welcome back to a place where you can relax." This may or may not be accompanied by a can of beer.
I think お疲れ様 is the phrase/word I miss the most in English, and I often catch myself wanting to say it to a non-Japanese speaker.
Conversely, "interesting" is a word I have been feeling a lack for in Japanese. As in "That's interesting" after hearing something.
Isn't "naruhodo" close enough? It's often translated as "I see", but the acknowledging filler variation is usually just "un", whereas naruhodo expresses a mild level of surprise.
I don't want to imply I find it amusing or something positive - it might be something sad or atrocious (面白い is out).
I don't want to imply I want to learn more or am deeply invested in it (興味ぶかい also out).
That pretty much exhausts the available options when I've asked Japanese friends.
The other big one I'd add is yoroshiku (+onegai-shimasu), which in the abstract conveys that the speaker anticipates some kind of help or cooperation from the listener. It can translate as anything from "looking forward to working with you" to "Please help, I'm counting on you", or even "I'm leaving this in your hands, get it done" depending on context, tone, honorifics and so on.
Another class of untranslatable japanese words that I find interesting are onomatopoeias. The language has a ridiculous number of them! "Pikachu", for example, is a famous example that is a combination of the onomatopoeias for sparkling (pika) and a mouse's squeaking sound (chu).
During a review the following verdict is given: “Its good. In fact it’s better than good: it is good enough”
I find it so funny because it really plays with our normal use of “good enough” as “not good, but useable” but of course it is entirely possible to make something that is good but not good enough
Good luck is out of your control, while ganbatte is cheering for you to do your best and the phrase can therefore be used even broader than good luck.
In a similar vein I always felt like otsukaresama somehow appreciates the effort that was put in to the work, where “good work” appreciates the result.
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.
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.
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'
The question is, if ancient Chinese had solved the problem in a more straightforward way, why did it then evolve to the more complex form where classifiers are mandatory?
Typically languages tend to evolve to be simpler.
> why did it then evolve to the more complex form where classifiers are mandatory?
Simple is not necessarily easy. The ancient Chinese is compact but not easy to learn.
The Chinese, especially the literary/classical Chinese[0] (as opposed to vernacular Chinese[1]) was very scholar oriented. It's pretty bizarre to the rest of the world because historically the government and scholars actually have strong influences and even controls over the language itself.
There were even many times like 'Hey, you know what? We believe the language is not good enough, and we're going to fix it!', and officers and scholars were assigned to refactor the language. The recent one leads to the traditional and the simplified Chinese diverse from each other. According to the legend, Cangjie[2] invented the Chinese characters, and it more or less becomes traditions, or at least the legend could help the government claims to refactor the language.
The ancients scholars tried to make the language compact and precise. However, the cost is the language is pretty cryptic. If you know a lot of idioms (usually 4 syllables), you would find they don't really make any sense unless you know the whole historical events/stories behind them.
Scholars from Korea, Japan, and Vietnam knew and love Chinese. Many of them tried to evangelize the language to their own people. But they never made it to the average people, though the were many strong influences till the modern days.
> Typically languages tend to evolve to be simpler.
Also, interestingly, the redundancy of the Chinese language actually largely increased over time. My personal take is it tends to be easier rather than simpler.
Some linguistics split Chinese into 3 periods: the old Chinese[3], the middle Chinese[4], and the old Mandarin[5] (the translation is 近代汉语 - is 'the near modern Chinese' if we translate it directly back to English). The middle Chinese period starts from the Northern and Southern dynasties (start from 420) to the Tang dynasty (end at 907).
In the beginning, during the old Chinese period, Chinese people tend to create new characters/syllables over new words (which might combined characters). And that's why the Chinese have so many characters nowadays. But the trend is not sustainable. To be frank, Chinese people may remember thousands of Characters, but they might not remember hundreds of thousands if the trends persist. Also from the syllables perspective, there would be not enough combinations.
So the middle Chinese period, the trend stopped and people started to combine two characters/syllables together for a word, this is especially common in vernacular Chinese. The vernacular Chinese during the middle Chinese period is actually pretty close to the old and modern Mandarin.
Also, Chinese people more or less having OCD on making characters/syllables in the same length so they would sound perfect, especially look perfect (Yes!) - poems usually have 5/7/9 syllables for each sentence. Words and idioms usually consist of 2 or 4 syllables. If a lot of words are made with 2 syllables, they rather make them all 2 syllables.
So the original common words would have a lot of redundancy, for example, 房(house)屋(room), actually refers to 房(house).
Back to the original question, my personal guess is there was no standard way of classify things, once classifier was more and more useful (because there were going to be more 'cup or bucket' issue as the society develops), the OCD Chinese people want to add fallback so it can make the expression balanced just like how they squeeze sentence 5/7/9 and words to 2/4 syllables. So it would be like 'two pairs of gold bowls, and forty grasps of golden keys'. But that's only ...
“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.
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.
I'm not even Spanish either.
"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.
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"
Nuances in languages are tough.
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_pass...
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).
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.
безнадежность->безысходность
Roughly translated as "endless despair"
Often I hear English speakers use the answer "It depends." where an Italian would use "Ni."
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.
Funny enough, sometimes it's even hard to transate the untranslatability of something.
Slightly different, french has "mouais", a sort of mmhokay, yeah i guess.
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
quick web search says there might not be a native word?
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.
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.
> 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.
And a (negative) figura can be "brutta" (literally ugly) but also "caprina" (caprine).
[1] 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?
So they might be untranslatable in certain contexts, for sure, and you have to scramble for alternatives which inevitably lose subtle shades of meaning.
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.
Translators that work dubbing movies have harder constraints and seldom fail to make sense, only when there're wordplays or words that sound similar to others...
Compare "Fuck" said with mad, resigned and amazed voice. It's 3 different words in some languages.
Or compare a line "Our hero heard someone crying 'I loved her' from the crowd". In some languages depending what grammatical gender is the person shouting the word ending in 'love' is different.
English books often skip that information, so the translator has to deduce or ask the author who was shouting that line. In a movie you know because you can see that person or hear the voice.
This makes more sense to me because your relationship to your mother's brother is actually meaningfully different to your mother's sister's husband.
When watching dubbed things (which in Swedish means exclusively children's shows) I often hear things which make little sense until I suddenly realise there's an English sentence with similar structure that would make sense in this context.
edit: In other words, translations often fail to make sense when poorly done, and a lot of them are.
Sometimes I enable English subtitles keeping the dubbed Spanish audio and it's often well done. There is very talented people working on the translations, giving the right tone to conversations.
My German was minimal, but when a swagman got out of a semi that had just given him a lift, he said "Danke Comarade" and I realized that he said "Thanks mate" which has greater connotations and meaning than just a thank you.
That would be "difficult to translate", then, not "untranslatable", no? As for breaking the flow of the text, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to do that anyway translating Russian to English.
Where would you draw the line? No culture has a concept which is literally unexplainable to any other.
Translators could potentially give meaning-for-meaning accurate translations if it were desirable, or possible, to give each word a paragraph of qualifiers and contexts. But translators are restricted to at least trying to preserve the structure of the translated work, and for words that means trying to pick a one- or two-word substitute.
Some words just don't have an accurate substitute. You can easily pick translations which are "not wrong", but none would be correct. What would you call those words, if not "untranslatable"?
Example:
A Pole, a German and a Russian meet the devil. He locks each one of them in a cell, gives them two small marbles each and tells them they have a month to impress him with them, or he'll eat them otherwise. So he comes back after a month and sees that the German's cell is full of complicated mathematical formulas and one marble is perfectly balanced on top of the other. He nods his head and moves on to the Russian's cell to see him doing one-handed pushups while juggling the marbles with the other hand. The devil nods again and moves to the Pole's cell, only to see that he lost one marble and broke the other one.
Is it funny? Because it's pretty good in Polish and I don't know how to translate it withotu longwinded explanation.
The problem is that the word "zepsuć" used for "breaking the marble" means "to spoil" or "to make something nonfunctional without destroying it physically". In English "break" is overloaded and people assume other meaning.
So the Pole in the joke managed to make the marble stop doing what marbles do without damaging it.
There's an opposite self-stereotype, captured by the phrase "Polak potrafi" (a Pole can do it), which actually emphasizes resourcefulness as a national trait. Although it's often tainted with irony, or at least implies that the creativity employed isn't really by the books, etc.
But, I enjoy prozd's short sketch on "official subs vs fansubs" in this regard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNxgHTWIlo (It demonstrates translation where an 'official' one is lossy, but the fansub tries to be more faithful).
Sobremesa means afternoon if you're not trying to be pedantic. If you are, it's after-lunch instead of after-noon.
You wouldn't enter the office and wish your coworkers "buena sobremesa". Or if you did, they would probably understand that you are mocking them for being idle at work.
Literally it is sobre (over) + mesa (table).
Learn what? The link just goes into a long bit of semantics stemming from the author's personal dislike of how other people use "untranslatable" as a word. There's nothing to "learn" from it, because it's a nothingburger.
Meanwhile, most if not all language teaching that goes on today still does treat translation as bijection. Students are constantly asked to remember "the word for X in language Y". While that might be a good-enough approximation, it also majorly encourages the idea that that's how translation itself works - so people might be forgiven trying to set the record straight by pointing out that many words are "untranslatable" that way.
Language Log isn't a personal blog, it's a group blog run by some fairly distinguished linguists, and their[1] point about bijection is coherently argued and deserves consideration.
> most if not all language teaching that goes on today still does treat translation as bijection
I'm not convinced - beyond beginner-level one quickly realizes that translation is not one-to-one. Is there a citation for this?
[1] 'Their' because "no word for X" is a running joke in LL: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1081
You don't believe the vast majority of language teaching happens at the beginner level? I certainly do, and it would be most people's only first-hand exposure to any kind of translation.
At beginner level language teaching, beyond the first few lessons, you run into words that are difficult to translate bijectively, e.g. ser/estar while learning Spanish from English.
Being a Scot, he usually followed up with a "They should settle on Scottish as a compromise!"
So in the news it was popularized when talking heads surmised the whole “Russia collusion” was a “nothingburger”. It had no substance —harking back to “where’s the beef?”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45763136
However, that seems to me like an over-reductionistic view of translation. Typically, in all except highly technical contexts, you don't only want to convey meaning, you want to keep at least a modicum of naturalness, the feeling that your translated sentence is something that a native speaker of language B might really say.
With that in view, I think it makes sense to say that there are words that are untranslatable in practice. Meaning is not lost, naturalness is.
For example, to say "facepalm" in Spanish you would have to say something like "I place my hand on my face in frustration". Does that convey the meaning? Sure. Has any Spanish speaker ever said it? I highly doubt it, except for the joke of trying to translate something that just doesn't lend itself to it.
Obviously, if you are using it in an internet forum you're probably not literally facepalming, just as if you use "lol" you're not laughing out loud, but even in these cases, I don't think that means that you can entirely decouple the word from the gesture. At least for me, when I read the word, what I imagine is someone facepalming. There are several other ways to express resigned frustration (a sigh, a shake of the head) but they are not the same even if they are ways of expressing the same.
For one thing, many of the swear words/expressions cannot be translated, not even by using more than one word/a few words, there are languages where one can fill entire books with swear-words/expressions (one of them is Romanian, which I speak natively, I've heard the same thing about Russian or Hungarian) and there are languages where swear words/expressions are a lot less diverse (English is the example I know best).
Of course, one can try to naively translate the "băga-mi-aș pula în morții mamii tale!" into the English "I will insert my dick into your mother's dead people", but this naive translation doesn't (can't) catch the word inversion "băga-mi-aș" (from "mi-aș băga") which makes the whole action sound a lot more dynamic and direct in Romanian, plus the word "pula" has a lot more meanings and context in Romanian compared to the simpler uses of "dick" in English, and last but not least the Anglo world seems not to care about one's dead people as much as we Romanians do (and I think we're not the only ones), and as such mentioning some other person's dead close relatives in a derogatory way is seen at most as quaint (while "morții tăi!"/"your dead people!" in Romanian is oftentimes used as a swear expression all by itself, I know I use it frequently).
And this before we get to all the diminutives/suffixes that can be added to any word that is part of a swear expression (and not only) in a language like Romanian, a feature that is absent from most of the English language. For example the mentioned above example can very be easily changed into:
> "băga-mi-aș pula în morții mămițicii tale!"
with the "mamii" to "mămățicii" change (basically from "your mother" to "your little mother", where "little" actually means "more loved"/closer to the person being addressed) giving the whole swear expression a new other, even more personal feeling.
He also told me about his favorite untranslatable Hungarian word, "bezzeg", which has to be handled on a case-by-case basis when translating into English.
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.
In practice, we get by mostly fine (partly because, as you point out, we have footnotes).
"...with the same cultural meaning into a different culture."
But that's a truism, surely. The words and expressions themselves can be translated as you demonstrated.
English has many diminutives as well, mother is considered rather formal. Mum, mummy, mumsie, mam, all convey different semantic levels of closeness.
The point linguists try to make is that 'untranslatable' doesn't exist, based on what they've seen thus far. To use a JS metaphor, some language features may require a semantic polyfill to translate a particular word (and some of these "polyfills" will be larger than others). But literally nothing in any human language is untranslatable, and this has to do with fairly fundamental issues of neuroscience and biology.
If we did find untranslatable concepts in Earth-based human languages, it'd have very interesting implications about the nature of human brains.
I think what's immediately wrong in your argument is equating untranslatability with exact one-word equivalent. Then instead of arguing against untranslatability, you argue that translation isn't just equating word for word. I agree with that. Most everyone I think agrees with that.
What's missing from that view is that different cultures mean different ways of viewing and experiencing the world, which necessitates different ways of expressing oneself, that is, different words and expressions. Words and expressions carrying a "cultural weight" so to speak, containing deep meaningful connections with its people and their history.
A talented person with excellent knowledge of two languages and great skill using at least one of them (being themselves an author, or a poet) can translate great works from the other language. And yet the resulting work may not be able to convey every nuance of the original.
Try it if you speak another language and read both the translated version and the original of a great work of literature and you'll see what I mean.
Agreed.
There's an even simpler way to experience this: jokes and puns. Often times, they are untranslatable because their literal meaning is nonsensical and all of its expressiveness comes from timing/context, play on words and/or a local cultural references. By the time you've explained a joke, it has already lost its effect.
There's a curious story among diplomatic translators where in a live diplomatic meeting, one of the parties blurted out a joke and the interpreter, attempting to accurately set the mood, translated it as "X just blurted out an untranslatable joke, please laugh heartily"!
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_Wo...
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!
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.
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
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.