[HN Gopher] Does Not Translate
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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
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(page generated 2022-01-14 23:00 UTC)