English speakers have a fascination with foreign language words that don’t translate easily into their own language, as seen in this New Yorker tweet promoting an article on “untranslatable words” describing happiness:
From “utepils” (Norwegian, “beer that is enjoyed outside, particularly on the first hot day of the year”) to “mbuki-mvuki” (Bantu, “to shed clothes to dance uninhibited”), the Positive Lexicography Project gathers untranslatable words describing happiness.
Which annoyed actual translator Jocelyne Allen greatly:
Auuugh!! Nothing is untranslatable! You translated those “untranslatable” words in this very tweet! They were translated, thus they are translatable! Can we please stop with this stuff before I have a rage aneurysm??
I get where she’s coming from, because it is lazy and dismissive to call this sort of thing untranslatable, when in the same tweet they’re perfectly able to at leasst the concepts behind them. It’s also somewhat patronising, this idea of untranslatable words, there’s always that undertone of if we didn’t invent a word to describe this concept, how important can it be. Othering even, emphasising how strange or silly these foreigners are for having a word for drinking beer outside. So I get the frustration.
On the other hand, there is a difference between having a word for something and being able to describe something. You can describe “utepils”, as that anonymous New Yorker social media person did, but do you grok it the way a Norwegian would? Clearly translating it needs more than just describing it, right, because you can’t just drop in a charmless description like that every time it comes up in your depressing Scandinavian crime thriller. So not untranslatable, but translating it does mean it loses a bit of cultural specificity.
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