[HN Gopher] Does Not Translate ___________________________________________________________________ Does Not Translate Author : renameme Score : 65 points Date : 2022-01-14 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (doesnottranslate.com) (TXT) w3m dump (doesnottranslate.com) | hk__2 wrote: | I'm always wary of these lists, because if you search for the | languages you know you always see that most of them are actually | translatable and/or rare expressions that nobody uses. | umanwizard wrote: | Also, a lot of the French ones, like "joie de vivre", have been | borrowed into English verbatim. "Joie de vivre" is indeed | translatable into English, and the translation is just "joie de | vivre". | | To claim otherwise would be like saying that the concept of | chile pepper can only be expressed in Nahuatl. | Hamuko wrote: | The problem with this list in particular is that it's composed | of user submissions on Reddit, where people probably only know | their language + English + maybe a third language. | | For example, "bjorntjanst" under Swedish. If you actually check | the Reddit post, you can see that people have posted | "niedzwiedzia przysluga" (Polish), "Barendienst" (German), | "medveda usluga" (Serbocroatian) and "bjornetjeneste" | (Norwegian) as the literal same word. I can also confirm that | the Finnish "karhunpalvelus" is also a literal one-to-one | translation. | ed_balls wrote: | yep e.g. Fucha in Polish form german Pfuscher | bee_rider wrote: | Also for any expression/phrase/word there will be a set of | languages into which it will easily translate, and a set of | languages into which it will not. | itdoestranslate wrote: | Interesting, but the premise is nonsense. Obviously these phrases | and words do translate. They are translated on the page, into | English. | onemoresoop wrote: | Well, everything can be explained in one way or another but the | idea is that there's no direct translation to get the full | meaning. My favorite is the German word schadenfreude which | clearly has no direct translation into English. It means | something like pleasure derived by someone from another | person's misfortune. Notice how many words it takes to explain | it... | NylaTheWolf wrote: | I think they meant it doesn't have an exact one word | equivalent. | itdoestranslate wrote: | That has never been the definition of translation. | hk__2 wrote: | If that's the case they should remove all the expressions | that are on the website. 5 of the 15 untranslatable Italian | "words" are multi-words like "in boca al lupo" (totally | translatable: "good luck") and "rompere il cazzo" (literally | "faire chier" in French). | bryanrasmussen wrote: | I can see some words on there that do have a one word | equivalent, or is it that the equivalencies can't express the | concept but also have other meanings as well. | | I wonder if that wouldn't be the actual rare words, not just | words that translate, but in which all the meanings of a word | in translating language are the same as the meanings of the | word in the target language. | | on edit: consider Hov in Danish which the page says does not | translate, but I think in English Whoa can handle all | permutations of Hov, but I don't think Hov really handles the | Keanu Reaves type of Whoa. Thus Hov can translate to English, | but Whoa cannot translate to Danish by this kind of strict | translation. | | But if we just accept that the most common meaning of a word | a needs to translate then Hov and Whoa can both translate to | each other, IMHO. | wbsss4412 wrote: | Or they are simply giving the closest possible translation. | | They list "te quiero" as meaning "I love you but not quite. | Which is a mistranslation. It literally translates as "I love | you". But at the same time you have "te amo", which also | translates to "I love you" yet they are two different phrases | with different meanings. | jp_sc wrote: | The best translation for "te quiero" is "I care about you" | umanwizard wrote: | The correct translation depends on the context, but I | think the English expression with the most overlap is "I | love you", with the understanding that the overlap is | imperfect because the English phrase can, in some but not | all contexts, imply a stronger emotion than the Spanish | one. | | "Te quiero" is an extremely common stock phrase in | Spanish, whereas nobody really says "I care about you" in | English, so I think that choice of "the best translation" | is unsatisfying. | lupire wrote: | "te quiero" = "i adore you" | jng wrote: | Not really. "I adore you" is literally "te adoro". | "Querer" in Spanish just means "to love", it's a synonym | to "amar", also "to love". "Querer" is more common | language and applied non-romantically all the time, and | "amar" is more poetic and veers more towards romantic | love, but they both mean the same. BTW, "querer" means | "to want", but when it is used to convey love (easy to | tell by context), it doesn't ring of objectification in | any way. "Quiero a mi familia" is the simplest, clearest, | way to say "I love my family". | wbsss4412 wrote: | This is what I had thought. And in the way this is | written, it's clear that querer does not have a clear | English translation. No English speaker would truly | understand the proper meaning and context with which | querer is used without knowing _some_ Spanish. | umanwizard wrote: | Indeed. | | When I first started dating someone who is natively | bilingual in English and (Northern Mexican) Spanish, she | didn't yet feel strongly enough about me to say "I love | you" in English, so she always told me "te quiero", as | there was no English phrase other than "I love you" that | fit in that niche. | wbsss4412 wrote: | That's not really my understanding of it, but I'm not | perfectly bilingual either. | dghf wrote: | But when people say something "doesn't translate", they usually | mean (and are understood as meaning) one or both of two things | -- that it doesn't translate _succinctly,_ or it doesn't | translate _exactly._ Japanese honorifics, for example, probably | fall under both. | htgb wrote: | Oh, don't be dull ;) the explanation when selecting a language: | | > Concepts in Swedish That are difficult to easily and directly | translate to other languages. | | Of course you can explain the concept in English, but you | couldn't replace it with a simple translation when used in a | sentence. Of course it's just a matter of degree since most | words have slightly different connotations in different | languages, but I found the lists entertaining and insightful. | | The quality of the entries vary, of course, but that's not an | issue with the premise... | silisili wrote: | Is this for words or expressions? Clicking through a few, it | seems both. I'm not sure it's fair to say phrases don't | translate...they just aren't used word for word. I think single | words that have no single word translation in other languages is | far more fascinating. Like say, Schadenfreude. | simongr3dal wrote: | (Perhaps unsuprisingly) danish does have a single word | translation: skadefro | duiker101 wrote: | Midly related: John Koenig recently released a book called "The | Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows"--a continuation of the amazing | homonymonous YouTube channel[1]--which contains new words he | created to describe emotions. Personally, I strongly recommend it | to all those that love languages and would love to explore more | about themselves! Being able to put a name to some emotions is | very empowering. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/obscuresorrows | 323 wrote: | Some non-English languages are importing English words/phrases | when the English one represents an idea that it's a bit more | complicated to express in the non-English language. I'm not | talking about technical terms. | | Random example: "work/life balance" | umanwizard wrote: | I have seen "people of color" used (untranslated) in German | magazine articles. | Hamuko wrote: | I think I've heard (and most likely used) "by the way" in | otherwise completely non-English sentences. | NylaTheWolf wrote: | This is actually a pretty awesome resource! It was pretty | interesting to see "-ish" on there. It never occurred to me that | there's likely not an exact equivalent to "-ish" in other | languages. | lucb1e wrote: | If you click to the reddit thread for that word, people mention | translations in various languages. | | I saw this shared on reddit a few days ago, it's a cool idea | but the actual words... there exist very few that are | _actually_ untranslateable. If you know more than one or two | languages, you probably spot some of them pretty fast. (It 's | funny you mention specifically -ish, that's one of the words I | was skeptical about and clicked through to the thread on, and | thus knew that people in the thread mentioned various | translations.) | CobrastanJorji wrote: | As a parent, I think I may start using the word "gyakugire" | regularly. | anthk wrote: | >Getting mad at somebody because they got mad at you for | something you did. | | Contestar in Spanish, in a second acception. | anthk wrote: | >Ish - a suffix that softens the exactness of an adjective. | | Spanish -eico, -izo... | | >Paragrafryttare. A person who follows written rules to such a | degree that they're seen as rigid and inflexible. | | Tiquismiquis. | | >Cornuto. To have horns, meaning that you (or a particular | person) has been cheated on by their spouse or significant other. | | Same in Spanish, cornudo. | | >A pop song released around spring that gets overplayed during | the summer. Swedish By frobar Go to the reddit thread Disagree | | Cancion del verano. | tyingq wrote: | >Paragrafryttare. A person who follows written rules to such a | degree that they're seen as rigid and inflexible | | Stickler seems to work in English. | Hamuko wrote: | > _Concepts in _____ That are difficult to easily and directly | translate to other languages._ | | Other languages, or English? Because I can definitely come up | with some non-English translations to some of the words here. For | example, "Haju" and "Tuoksu" in Finnish are "Chou i" and "Nay i" | in Japanese. Swedish "mellandagarna" is also pretty much word- | for-word "valipaivat" in Finnish. | matsemann wrote: | I've spoken English for years, but mostly online with foreign | people or when abroad myself. | | But recently I started working a place here in Norway where all | communication is in English. Speaking English but often in a | Norwegian context, have made me sometimes grasp for these kind of | words. Like "romjul" when trying to ask who is gonna be oncall | this christmas. Or asking if people are going to "Syden" during | their summer holidays. | | Syden is not on the page, but is generally when you travel south | (italy, spain, greece) to lie on a beach and drink cheap alcohol. | dr_pardee wrote: | As of writing this, 53 Interesting Words in English That Don't | Translate... "pearl-clutching" English speaker and I never heard | this. If pearl-clutching counts, there's a million more words on | Urban Dictionary I'm sure | noduerme wrote: | pearl-clutching isn't recently made up... it has a literary | history going back at least a century. | | https://www.google.com/search?q=%22clutching%20her%20pearls%... | LiquidSky wrote: | That says more about you than the list. I'm guessing you must | be pretty young, because "pearl-clutching" is an older term | that may be used less frequently these days, though I do still | see it fairly often. | skinkestek wrote: | I'm not a native English speaker but pearl-clutching I've read | more than once and but this is probably the first time I saw | definition for it. | 323 wrote: | I've seen it used quite often by journalists. That would imply | that it's relatively well known, since journalists are | discouraged from using obscure words/phrases in titles. | | > _Brianna Keilar Hits Pearl-Clutching Republicans With A Very | Long List Of Trump 's Insults_ | | https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brianna-keilar-gop-hypocrisy-... | | > _It's pearl-clutching Democrats who got massacred by Trump | impeachment trial: Goodwin_ | | https://nypost.com/2020/02/08/its-pearl-clutching-democrats-... | dekhn wrote: | You may also enjoy, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke in which it | translates, but not particularly well. | tedunangst wrote: | TIL there's no English word for "to speak among Esperantists in a | language besides Esperanto", although I'm not sure one is needed | either. | ILMostro7 wrote: | What if you do: | | s/Esperantists/English-speakers/ and "non-English" | | AFAIK, the English language is very verbose. If there are so | many words, many of which have very similar meaning to others, | then many of those words are not needed? Should be removed, | even, until everyone forgets them and doesn't miss them at all? | xhevahir wrote: | Should be removed by what or by whom? English doesn't have an | equivalent of the Icelandic Language Institute or French | Academy, and even if it did, there's no reason to believe | that institution could control the development of a language | that's used all over the world by so many people. | umanwizard wrote: | All human languages have redundancy, ambiguity, | inconsistencies, etc. English isn't special in this regard. | | > Should be removed | | Language is an emergent social phenomenon, not something | anyone really controls or directs, so what "should" be done | with it is a bit meaningless. | pdonis wrote: | _> the English language is very verbose. If there are so many | words, many of which have very similar meaning to others, | then many of those words are not needed?_ | | "Very similar" is not the same as "identical". Having | multiple words with similar, but not identical, meanings | allows you to express more detailed nuances and shades of | meaning. | ChrisSD wrote: | That apparent redundancy is a gift to poets and anyone who | likes to play with language. Admittedly, it may be annoying | for people learning the language but ambiguity of language is | a useful tool. | trynumber9 wrote: | I propose croctalking. | Hokusai wrote: | I think that 'Fika' is an interesting one. In Spanish, or at | least in Spain, 'to go for a coffee' implies the same things that | 'fika' does. Nobody expects to buy coffee to drink at the office, | or at home, as to talk and socialize is more important than the | coffee itself. | | I guess that in English speaking countries it could mean | literally to go to buy a cup of coffee and hurry back with the | coffee to your desk. Wouldn't 'to for a beer' have the same | implications, maybe with more noise, than fika but with beer | instead of coffee and cookies? | actually_a_dog wrote: | It looks to me like "fika" is just like "chilling." See, for | instance, https://www.swedishfood.com/fika ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-14 23:00 UTC)