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12 untranslatable words (and Share

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their translations) 88

Words like the Portuguese saudade, or Danish Share 171

hyggelig, can only truly be understood by Email

speakers of those languages. Right?

David S hariatmadari
theguardian.com, Thursday 21 August 2014 09.37 BST
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We’d all like to believe in untranslatable words. It’s Kingston climbs
such a romantic thought: that there exist out there, like crane in Bangalore
undiscovered desert islands, ideas we have never Huge fish eats shark
even conceived of. Carefully guarded by foreigners John Humphrys is whole

wrong – the A huge fish has

they have endured down the centuries, nuggets of
historic present snatched a shark
culture overlooked by the rest of the world. from a fisherman's
tense keeps the
past alive hook as it was being reeled in off the coast of
There are a fair few linguistic and non-linguistic Florida
David
assumptions bound up in this romance, most of which Shariatmadari: James Foley's parents
are decidedly dodgy. For example, the idea that any What's in the past The parents of James
aspect of human experience could be inaccessible to tense should stay Foley talk about their
there, says
you just because you speak the wrong language. Or son: 'Jimmy's free,
Humphrys. But the
he's finally free'
that if a language doesn’t have a single word for a historic present is
concept (that’s before we’ve even defined exactly what the natural tense of
narrative
a “word” is), there can be no way to express it. Then
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there’s the notion that words are a reliable key to the Can we talk to the
culture that uses them. Drunken ones might have lots animals? The Guardian's
online dating site
of ways to describe intoxication. Religious ones might 11 words that are
have a rich vocabulary for mystical states, and so on. much older than
you think
Then there are the often-cited examples themselves. The FBI's guide to
They’re nearly all ridiculous, when you look at them Twitter acronyms
closely. is worse than
useless, IMHO PQRST, 49 travis.21, 31

Hyggelig Bilingualism is Meet someone worth meeting

good for you. But
This charmingly sensuous word is Danish. One over- monoglots needn't I am a Man
excited website says that it “designates the mentality despair Seeking Women
and demeanor of being warm, accommodating and Are these the most Aged 25 to 45
friendly. Politically, it finds an echo [in Denmark] to endangered In
accents of United Kingdom
welcome political refugees.” How about just “comfy”?
English? Within 20 miles
Google comes up “nice”, and one Dane on Twitter
Of
suggests “cozy”.

Saudade Search

This Portuguese word crops up on lots of

untranslatable lists. Writer Manuel de Melo has defined
it as “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy”. To
me that’s a reasonable description of the concept of
“nostalgia”. It sounds like the important place that
saudade occupies in the literary and musical tradition
of Portuguese-speaking countries is the hard thing to
“translate”. In other words, this is just a case of cultural
difference.

Utepils

In Norwegian, this word means “to sit outside on a

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sunny day enjoying a beer”. How quaint! Those cheeky
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translations) | David Shariatmadari
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But English certainly has a plethora of contenders for a
rough equivalent: self-pity, remorse, regret, anguish,
shame.

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Inukitut, an Inuit language of Canada. It’s short. The
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Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız
entrepreneurial spirit, as touted by the
With the breakup of Czechslovakia, Turks found government, but a sign of a lacklustre labour
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long new word, which means “you are reportedly one
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are run together. It’s not really a word, but a sentence. Comment from the paper

Val McDermid: Away with the fearties –

Schnapsidee Scotland shouldn’t be scared to go it
alone
A useful concept from German. “An ingenious plan
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Waldeinsamkeit

Another German word, coined by the romantic poet

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22/8/2014 12 untranslatable words (and their translations) | David Shariatmadari | Comment is free | theguardian.com

is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without

any specific cause.” Twitter is more succinct:

@D_Shariatmadari @commentisfree
sadness/sorrow (count since I am a native
speaker :))here you may find other options:
http://t.co/FDyhqLqNAb
— Maria Nechepa (@nechepka) August 7,
2014

Goya

This Urdu word, of Persian origin, apparently describes

“the suspension of disbelief that can occur, often
through good storytelling”. In fact, it simply means “it is
said”, equivalent to “apparently”. Used in telling tales,
certainly, but the “translation” picks up the associations
of the word, rather than its meaning.

Razbliuto

Russian wistfulness again. Razbliuto means “a feeling

a person has for someone he or she once loved but
no longer feels the same way about”. Or so William
Safire believed. But he got it from Christopher J
Moore, who got it from Howard Rheingold who got it
from J Bryan III who got it from an episode of The Man
from UNCLE, the scriptwriters of which evidently made
it up. A case of Russian whispers?

But hang on …

These examples of “untranslatability” are all wrong or

just silly in their various ways. But it’s hard to shake off
the feeling that there’s some truth in the idea that
speaking a different language makes you see the
world slightly differently: as though wearing tinted
glasses that lend everything a French or Russian tinge.
Two ideas in linguistics are relevant here. The first,
called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, holds that language
determines what humans are capable of thinking.
Since languages vary starkly, so must thought. After
lots of study, few linguists now believe that a given
language can do more than slightly alter what we pay
attention to in a situation, usually through its grammar.
The second is the idea of structuralism, in which every
part of the structure of a language is related. Think of it
like this: the real world is a plain patch of ground, and
language is a net we throw over it. Each time the net
falls, every one of the diamond-shaped holes lands on
a slightly different patch. The net’s a bit worn out, and
some of the holes are torn, meaning they cover more
ground. Some bunch up and cover less. Think of
words as being like these holes: so saudade might
mean something slightly more than homesickness,
whereas dépaysement means something less,

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22/8/2014 12 untranslatable words (and their translations) | David Shariatmadari | Comment is free | theguardian.com

referring only to that kind of homesickness you get

from being in a foreign country. Linguists have called
the semantic space words occupy a “lexical field”.

So the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis falls, but the notion of

lexical fields makes a lot of sense. In short: no word is
completely untranslatable, but then no word is
precisely translatable either. And, I promise you, that’s
no schnapsidee.

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All comments Staff replies Guardian picks

These comments have been chosen by Guardian staff because they contribute to the debate.

stoneface1 99
21 August 2014 10:34am

we named our daughter...Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız...we call

her...Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadık for short....

gotet 53
21 August 2014 10:51am

The reason why many Scandinavian words are "untranslatable" is simply that
English have an enormous variety of words, whereas Danish and Swedish often use
one word for which we can give 1-2 meanings in English (and often more).

So "hyggelig" in Danish is typically translated as "cosy", but they use it where we

would use "pleasant" or "nice".

Another example - "skive" in Danish is a "slice", but can also means a disc (like a
CD or DVD), a washer, a dial or a record.

"Lagom" in Swedish, mentioned in a previous comment, could mean "optimal", but

they also use it where we would use "just right", "do-able", "achievable", "down-to-
earth" or even in a negative sense like "average" or "basic".

I suspect this has to do with English having both latin and germanic roots .

LMV1 69
21 August 2014 10:53am

Here's one from Mexican Spanish: Engentarse (as in "Estoy engentado"). It is the
sensation of needing to be away from people after a period of being in their company.
It is not being fed up with them, for you may be having the most wonderful time on,
say, holidays or a long barbecue with them but it comes a moment in which you've
had enough of being in their company (or anyone else's), as you would with the most
delicious food. At that moment you are "engentado".

mjback 76
21 August 2014 11:57am

"No word is precisely translatable" because of connotation and cultural context.

When Jim Royle refers to "coriander", he uses it to symbolise pretentious foreign

food (Ooooh, we'll be having coriander on our Dairylea next!). Translate what he says
into the language of a country where coriander is a bog-standard ingredient, and it
becomes meaningless.

Think about common words like "bread" and "house", or the phrase "we were eating
our lunch". The images they conjure up will be quite different from culture to culture.
Say the word "parsnip" to a Brit and he will immediately have a mental image of a
parsnip. Say the equivalent word ("panais") to a person in the South of France and
they're likely to reply "what's that?"

Translation is all about finding solutions to these kinds of problems.

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