Favourite untranslatables [closed]

Question

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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Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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."

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

Schadenfreude

German for "pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schadenfreude

Answer 5

English seems to have formed with only 3 or 4 words for emotions, not counting the dozens of words meaning "inebriated". Fortunately, the language's facility with innovation has given us many loanwords for emotional states. Some more examples of nuanced emotions borrowed from other languages:

Angst, Tristesse, Schadenfreude, Joie de vivre, Amour fou

Answer 6

I particularly like the French phrase l'esprit de l'escalier -- it literally means the spirit of the staircase, but it refers to coming up with the perfect retort to something only after you've left the room.

Answer 7

One of my favorites has always been the Russian "оскомина" [ʌs'komʲɪnɘ], which can be defined as

temporary toothache which you can get by biting into something extremely sour, or eating too much of something sour — especially apples or grapes —, and which you won't actually feel at all if you just stop eating, but which will make biting, chewing, or even drinking extremely painful for hours to come.

I sometimes refer to it as "hidden toothache" or "ninja toothache". It will usually go away all by itself after some time. Traditional medicine also recommends drinking milk, weak tea, or baking-soda solution to make it go away faster.

Answer 8

From Portuguese:

• Saudade: it is a noun that is akin to "missiness", the feeling of missing someone. A bit like "homesick", but that can be used not simply for missing home, but for when you miss someone, or something (anything).

• Chato: similar to "pain in the neck", but a bit less strong. It is the opposite of nice, used when you don't really like someone (but that person does not necessarily have to be so unbearable as a "pain in the neck").

• Frescura: close to "fussiness". It is even hard to explain, but it is used when someone is fussy about something, or particular about something, we say that the person "is with frescura".

• este, esta, isto, esse, essa, isso, aquele, aquela, aquilo: similar to "this" and "that". Actually, "isto", "este" and "esta" can be translated exactly as "this" (losing only gender information). But each of other two forms, when translated to their closest approximation, "that", lose some meaning. When the thing in question is closer to the listener we use "isso", "esse" and "essa", while "aquilo", "aquele" and "aquela" mean the thing is away from both. It's funny how Portuguese has no neuter pronoun ("it") but it has neuter demonstratives ("isto", "isso", "aquilo").

Interesting that... I once read that our thoughts are limited by the language we speak, and I think this is so true!

Answer 9

My all-time favorite is the Dutch (and German) word "gezellig" ("gemütlich"). It can be used in any number of pleasant scenarios to describe:

• The nice ambience (e.g. soft lighting, crackling fire, quiet murmur);
  "Dit restaurant is gezellig." (This restaurant is cozy.)
• Enjoyable company (e.g. when a group of friends gets along well);
  "Ga je gezellig mee uit?" (Will you join us sociably?)
• Having enjoyed a period of time together (e.g. a pleasant evening).
  "Het was vandaag gezellig." (It was fun [with others] today.)

When hosting tourists, I often realize how frequently the word is used to really describe anything... nice.

Answer 10

Going out on a limb here, because I don't really speak German, but there's one "word" I do quite like, which is Jein, a mix of Ja and Nein, which kind of means "Yes and No, neither, I can't answer that".

Answer 11

In Malay, there are two words for hot: pedas, spicy hot, and panas, temperature. I remember this only as a request for clarification.

"This food is hot"
"Pedas or panas?"

It was always useful.

Answer 12

The obvious from the French: savoir-faire.

Answer 13

I always struggle to explain the Spanish "cursi" to my English-speaking friends. It is an adjective that you apply to a person (or, rarely, a thing) that is trite, corny, presumptuous and baroquely embellished. You would say it of a little girl with a pretty dress full of lacy ribbons and a silly voice that acts as if she were the queen of the world.

Answer 14

The word "Volta" in Greek is similar to the English word "jaunt", but has a more nuanced meaning with other connotations.

In the late afternoon/early evening in Greece it is traditional for a family or social group of friends to go on a stroll outdoors en masse, often after a meal.

After a late lunch, the entire family took a volta down to the plaka (town square).

Answer 15

IMO, no word is precisely translatable. Similar to codominance in genetics, all recessive synonyms eventually take part in carrying "submeaning" of a text, if it is targeted for a human reader.

Answer 16

The Japanese words which mean, roughly, "this" and "that".

If I remember correctly from my beginner's class:

• Kore = this (object is closer to the speaker than the listener).
• Sore = that (object is closer to the listener than the speaker).
• Are = that (object is far from both the speaker and the listener).

Japanese is also full of forms which demonstrate the relative social or professional status of the speaker and listener, which have no precise counterparts in English. (See honorific speech).

Answer 17

In Urdu, تو، تم and آپ all are translated into English as "you". Although all these words literally mean "you", there is a different level of respect associated with each, and they would be used in different scenarios. Aap (آپ) being the most respectful, then tum(تم) and then tu(تو) crossing the line into derogatory or very casual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu#Politeness

Answer 18

In Arabic, plural starts from three. So there is a word for one object, another word for two objects and then a word for plural. This applies to pronouns as well

Answer 19

The following have stuck as English loanwords, albeit in niche jargon:

• Zeitnot (German): being short of time.
• Sabaki (Japanese): having the initiative, and "on a roll".
• Schwerpunkt (German): "point of attack", but more like, the best place to chop a tree to bring it down.
• Aji (Japanese): potential energy, in the sense that a rock in your hand has more of it than a rock on the ground.
• Mook (Chinese): a form of cannon fodder used in movies; and on software projects to pad the roster when you get paid by the hour.

.

Answer 20

Russian razbliuto: the feeling you have for someone you once loved, but now do not.

Answer 21

Although a particle and not a word or idiom, there's the French untranslatable "ne" in the subjunctive mood. For example:

Je ne doute pas qu'il n'ait raison = I do not doubt that he is right

I remember this giving me nightmares in A-level French :-)

Answer 22

Separate pronouns for second person singular and second person plural.

Answer 23

In Swedish, there's a word called lagom which is a bit difficult to translate to English.

It means "just right", "in moderation", "enough", "adequate", "not too much, not too little", etc. Generally it conveys the impression of "being content".

Answer 24

There is a term used in dressage Durchlässigkeit which means something like "throughness" or "permeability" in terms of the flow of the rider's aids through the horse. Obviously, permeability - which I believe to be the literal translation - is an English word, but basically meaningless in this context; if I said a horse was permeable the logical response would be to avoid putting them out in the rain.