Favourite untranslatables [closed]
What are your favourite words and idioms in other languages that don't have good, succinct equivalents in English?
(The issue of whether there is, or could be, a sentence on one language whose meaning could not be made known in another is a different, albeit interesting, philosophical question.)
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I like the pronouns in Māori. For instance, in English we have the word we. In Māori there are different words depending on who we are:
- Mātou: The group of us, not including you.
- Tātou: The group of us, including you.
- Māua: The two of us, not including you.
- Tāua: You and me.
In English, we'd have to say the following, where one of the above words would suffice:
- My group is going to the city.
- Our group is going to the city.
- My friend and I are going to the city.
- You and I are going to the city.
Of course, for any "untranslatable" phrase, there is a way to put the phrase forward in any language. It just becomes a whole lot more cumbersome. It works both ways. There are indeed many phrases in English, which cannot really translate well into another language. This is why translations into other languages are very often larger than the English original, but sometimes shorter, for much the same reason. Also the translation for the same sentence can differ depending on the context.
For instance, where I wrote my friend and I, I could easily have written my father and I, or this policeman and I. Of course, in English, I could just use the word we, if the person I was speaking to knew that I was going to go somewhere with someone else. But if they didn't, the Maori version is a lot more succinct.
Nu -- Yiddish word that has no real equivalent in English. Leo Rosten writes: "nu is the verbal equivalent of a sign, a frown, a grin, a grunt, a sneer."
I like the website "untranslatable" for this kind of list.
a community project formed to examine issues of untranslatability in general, with a specific focus on single words that require phrases, paragraphs, or pages to translate
Example:
"Fond de l'air"
This is a classic of untranslatable French words/idioms.
You simply cannot convey (at least not in English, maybe someone can help me discover a language that can) the meaning of the French word "fond de l'air" which is used only in the sentence:"Le fond de l'air est frais."
"Fond de l'air" literally means "the bottom of the air" (not as in arse but more like in the bottom of the glass).
The whole sentence means that the weather is sunny and you could be tricked into thinking that it is summertime, the air is warm and in parading in your bikini when in fact the air is quite cool (not in a refreshing and welcome way) and the weather is just waiting for you to stop being on your guard to give you a nasty cold.
Schadenfreude
German for "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude