{"id":9397,"date":"2021-08-08T05:17:36","date_gmt":"2021-08-08T10:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=9397"},"modified":"2021-08-08T05:17:36","modified_gmt":"2021-08-08T10:17:36","slug":"translating-the-untranslatable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2021\/08\/08\/translating-the-untranslatable\/","title":{"rendered":"Translating the untranslatable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nEnglish speakers have a fascination with foreign language words that don&#8217;t translate easily into their own language, as seen in <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NewYorker\/status\/1424155297472516099?s=20\">this New Yorker tweet<\/a> promoting an article on &#8220;untranslatable words&#8221; describing happiness:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nFrom \u201cutepils\u201d (Norwegian, \u201cbeer that is enjoyed outside, particularly on the first hot day of the year\u201d) to \u201cmbuki-mvuki\u201d (Bantu, \u201cto shed clothes to dance uninhibited\u201d), the Positive Lexicography Project gathers untranslatable words describing happiness.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nWhich <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/brainvsbook\/status\/1424161002132807680?s=20\">annoyed actual translator Jocelyne Allen greatly<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nAuuugh!! Nothing is untranslatable! You translated those \u201cuntranslatable\u201d 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??\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nI get where she&#8217;s coming from, because it is lazy and dismissive to call this sort of thing untranslatable, when in the same tweet they&#8217;re perfectly able to at leasst the concepts behind them. It&#8217;s also somewhat patronising, this idea of untranslatable words, there&#8217;s always that undertone of if we didn&#8217;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.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nOn the other hand, there is a difference between having a word for something and being able to describe something. You can describe &#8220;utepils&#8221;, as that anonymous <cite>New Yorker<\/cite> 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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>English speakers have a fascination with foreign language words that don&#8217;t translate easily into their own language, as seen in this New Yorker tweet promoting an article on &#8220;untranslatable words&#8221; describing happiness: From \u201cutepils\u201d (Norwegian, \u201cbeer that is enjoyed outside, particularly on the first hot day of the year\u201d) to \u201cmbuki-mvuki\u201d (Bantu, \u201cto shed clothes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9398,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9397\/revisions\/9398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}