Untranslatable

The ease and reasonable accuracy with which Google Translate translates words, sentences and paragraphs sometimes makes us forget how hard it is to translate entire books.

So why is translating books so hard? The usual “culprit” is context: the background, cultural practices and accepted/expected behavioural norms of one language (and by extension, region) don’t apply in others.

Context aside, some words have no equivalents in other languages. But contrary to what you might think, this article on “true untranslatability” says the issue is not the lack of one-to-one words:

“The common trope that language X has no word for Y is usually useless (it usually means language X uses several words instead of one for Y).”

It cites this great example:

“shockingly specific single words in other languages like mamihlapinatapei, which is apparently Yagan for “the wordless yet meaningful look shared by two people who desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to start.” But of course mamihlapinatapei is translatable into English. It's “the wordless yet meaningful look shared by two people who desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to start.” Needing several words for one isn't the same as untranslatability.”

So what is truly untranslatable then?

“What really can't be translated properly is "go" into Russian, or "loved" into Spanish, not because the English words are too specific but because they're too vague.”

If you’re wondering, turns out the Russian language is way too specific:

“And Russian (more than most languages) forces a bunch of other distinctions on English speakers. The average verb of motion requires you to express whether you're going by vehicle or foot, one-direction or multidirectionally, and in the past tense, makes you include an ending for your own gender. So "I went" would, in one Russian word (khodila, say), express "I [a female] went [by foot] [and I came back]." If you don't want to express all of that, tough luck. You have to.”

The article said it perfectly when it asked:

“Who knew that the truly untranslatable words were those that say the least?”