Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another (given) language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a ''lacuna'', or
lexical gap
In linguistics an accidental gap, also known as a gap, paradigm gap, accidental lexical gap, lexical gap, lacuna, or hole in the pattern, is a potential word, word sense, morpheme, or other form that does not exist in some language despite being t ...
. The term arises when describing the difficulty of achieving the so-called perfect translation. It is based on the notion that there are certain concepts and words that are so interrelated that an accurate translation becomes an impossible task.
Some writers have suggested that language carries sacred notions or is intrinsic to national identity. Brian James Baer posits that untranslatability is sometimes seen by nations as proof of the national genius. He quotes Alexandra Jaffe: "When translators talk about untranslatable, they often reinforce the notion that each language has its own 'genius', an 'essence' that naturally sets it apart from all other languages and reflects something of the 'soul' of its culture or people".
A translator, however, can resort to various translation procedures to compensate for a lexical gap. From this perspective, untranslatability does not carry deep
linguistic relativity
Linguistic relativity asserts that language influences worldview or cognition. One form of linguistic relativity, linguistic determinism, regards peoples' languages as determining and influencing the scope of cultural perceptions of their surro ...
implications. Meaning can virtually always be translated, if not always with technical accuracy.
Theories
There is a school of thought identified with
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin ( ; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Jewish mysticism, Western M ...
that identifies the concept of "sacred" in relation to translation, and this pertains to the text that is untranslatable because its meaning and letter cannot be disassociated.
It stems from the view that translation should realize the imagined perfect relationship with the original text. This theory highlights the paradoxical nature of translation wherein it—as a process—assumes the forms of necessity and impossibility at the same time. This is demonstrated in
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...
's analysis of the myth of
Babel, a word which he described as a name that means confusion and also a proper name of God.
Furthermore, Derrida noted that when God condemned the world to a multiplicity of tongues, he created a paradoxical need and impossibility of translation.
Derrida himself has put forward his own notion of the untranslatability of the text, arguing in his early works such as the ''Writing and Difference'' and ''Margins of Philosophy'' that there is an excess of untranslatable meaning in literature, and it cannot be reduced to a closed system or a restricted economy
"in which there is nothing that cannot be made to make sense."
Brian James Baer posits that untranslatability is sometimes seen by nations as proof of their national genius. Literature that can be easily translated may be considered as lacking originality, while translated works themselves may be regarded merely as imitations. Baer quotes
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Republic of Geneva, Genevan philosopher (''philosophes, philosophe''), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment through ...
defining true genius as "the kind that creates and makes everything out of nothing". Paraphrasing
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost (March26, 1874January29, 1963) was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American Colloquialism, colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New E ...
's remark about poetry ("Poetry is what gets lost in translation"), Baer suggests that "one could define national identity as that which is lost in translation". He further quotes Alexandra Jaffe: "When translators talk about untranslatable, they often reinforce the notion that each language has its own 'genius', an 'essence' that naturally sets it apart from all other languages and reflects something of the 'soul' of its culture or people".
Quite often, a text or utterance that is considered to be "untranslatable" is considered a ''lacuna'', or
lexical gap
In linguistics an accidental gap, also known as a gap, paradigm gap, accidental lexical gap, lexical gap, lacuna, or hole in the pattern, is a potential word, word sense, morpheme, or other form that does not exist in some language despite being t ...
. That is, there is no one-to-one equivalence between the word, expression or turn of phrase in the source language and another word, expression or turn of phrase in the target language. A translator can, however, resort to a number of translation procedures to compensate for this. From this perspective, untranslatability or difficulty of translation does not always carry deep
linguistic relativity
Linguistic relativity asserts that language influences worldview or cognition. One form of linguistic relativity, linguistic determinism, regards peoples' languages as determining and influencing the scope of cultural perceptions of their surro ...
implications;
denotation
In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of a word or expression is its strictly literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of having high temperature. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning in ...
can virtually always be translated, given enough
circumlocution, although
connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood cultural or emotional association that any given word or phrase carries, in addition to its explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation.
A connotation is frequently described as either positive or ...
may be
ineffable or inefficient to convey.
Examples
Register
Although
Thai has words that can be used as equivalent to English "I", "you", or "he/she/it", they are relatively formal terms (or markedly informal). In most cases, Thai people use words which express the relation between speaker and listener according to their respective roles. For instance, for a mother to say to her child "I'll tell you a story", she would say "" (), or "Mother will tell child a story". Similarly, older and younger friends will often use sibling terminology, so that an older friend telling a younger friend "You're my friend" would be "" (), would translate directly as "Younger sibling is older sibling’s friend". To be translated into English correctly, it is proper to use "I" and "you" for these example statements, but normal Thai perceptions of relation are lost in the process.
A similar feature can also be observed in Indonesian. One may use the formal form of pronouns, which are generally distinct from the informal/familiar forms; however, the use of these pronouns does not evoke sufficient friendliness or intimacy, especially in spoken language. Instead of saying "", a waiter/waitress will most likely say "" (lit. 'Father/Mother wants to order what?'). The two expressions are equally polite; however, the latter is more sympathetic and friendly. When conversing with family and relatives, most Indonesians also prefer using
kinship terminology
Kinship terminology is the system used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology; ...
(father, mother, brother, sister) when addressing older family members. When addressing younger family members, informal pronouns are more prevalent.
Verb forms
English lacks some grammatical categories which are present in some other languages.
There is no simple way in English to contrast Finnish or Polish (continuing, corresponding to English 'to write') with or (a regular
frequentative
In grammar, a frequentative form (abbreviated or ) of a word indicates repeated action but is not to be confused with iterative aspect. The frequentative form can be considered a separate but not completely independent word called a frequentativ ...
, 'to occasionally write short passages at a time', or 'to jot down now and then'). Similarly, and (to jump once) contrast with and (to continuously jump; to be jumping from point A to B).
Irish allows the
prohibitive mood to be used in the
passive voice
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...
. The effect is used to prohibit something while expressing society's disapproval for that action at the same time. For example, contrast (meaning 'Don't smoke' when said to more than one person), which uses the second person plural in the imperative meaning "Do not smoke", with (best translated as 'Smoking just isn't done here'), which uses the autonomous imperative meaning 'One does not smoke'.
Italian has three distinct declined past tenses: thus (), (), and () all mean 'I was'. The first indicates a concluded action in the (remote) past, the second a progressive or habitual action in the past, and the latter an action that holds some connection to the present, especially if a recent time is specified ("" for 'this morning I saw'). The is often used for narrative history (for example, novels). Nowadays, the difference between and is blurred in the spoken language, the latter being used in both situations. What difference there exists is partly geographic. In the north of Italy the is very rarely used in everyday speech, whereas in the south it often takes the place of the . The distinction is only alive in Tuscany, which makes it dialectal even if hardline purists insist it should be applied consistently.
Likewise, English lacks a productive grammatical means to show
indirection
In computer programming, an indirection (also called a reference) is a way of referring to something using a name, reference, or container instead of the value itself. The most common form of indirection is the act of manipulating a value through ...
but must instead rely on
periphrasis
In linguistics and literature, periphrasis () is the use of a larger number of words, with an implicit comparison to the possibility of using fewer. The comparison may be within a language or between languages. For example, "more happy" is periph ...
, that is the use of multiple words to explain an idea. Finnish grammar, on the contrary, allows the regular production of a series of verbal derivatives, each of which involves a greater degree of indirection. For example, on the basis of the verb ('to pull'), it is possible to produce:
* (pull),
* (cause something/someone to pull/to wind-up (lie)),
* (cause something/someone to cause something/someone to pull),
* (cause something/someone to cause something/someone to cause something/someone to pull).
Hindi has a similar concept of indirection. means 'to do'; means 'to make someone do'; means 'to get someone to make yet another person do'.
Most
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...
(Turkish, Azeri, Kazakh) contain the grammatical verb suffix ''miş'' (or ''mis'' in other dialects), which indicates that the speaker did not witness the act personally but surmises or has discovered that the act has occurred or was told of it by another, as in the example of (Turkish), which can be expressed in English as "it is reported that he/she/it has gone", or, most concisely, as "apparently, he/she/it has gone". This grammatical form is especially used when telling jokes, or narrating stories.
Similar to the Turkic ''miş'', nearly every
Quechua sentence is marked by an evidential
clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
, indicating the source of the speaker's knowledge (and how certain they are about the statement). The enclitic ''=mi'' expresses personal knowledge (''Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirmi'', "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver - I know it for a fact"); ''=si'' expresses hearsay knowledge (''Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirsi'', "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, or so I've heard"); ''=chá'' expresses high probability (''Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirchá'', "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, most likely"). Colloquially, the latter is also used when the speaker has dreamed the event told in the sentence or experienced it while intoxicated.
Languages that are extremely different from each other, like English and
Chinese, need their translations to be more like adaptations. Chinese has no
tenses per se, only three
aspects. The English verb "
to be" does not have a direct equivalent in Chinese. In an English sentence where "to be" leads to an
adjective
An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...
("It ''is'' blue"), there is no "to be" in Chinese. (There are no adjectives in Chinese, instead there are
stative verbs
In linguistics, a stative verb is a verb that describes a state of being, in contrast to a dynamic verb, which describes an action. The difference can be categorized by saying that stative verbs describe situations that are static, or unchanging ...
that do not need an extra verb.) If it states a location, the verb () is used, as in "We ''are'' in the house". In some other cases (usually when stating a judgement), the judgment verb () is used, as in "I ''am'' the leader." And in most other cases, such structure ("to be") is simply not used, but some more natural structure in Chinese is used instead. Any sentence that requires a play on those different meanings will not work the same way in Chinese. In fact, very simple concepts in English can sometimes be difficult to translate, for example, there is no single direct translation for the word "yes" in Chinese, as in Chinese the affirmative is said by repeating the verb in the question. ("Do you have it?" "(I) have".)
Vocabulary
German,
Dutch, and
Danish have a wealth of
modal particles that are particularly difficult to translate as they convey sense or tone rather than strictly grammatical information. The most infamous example perhaps is (Dutch: , Danish: ), which roughly means "Don't you realize that . . . ?" or "In fact it is so, though someone is denying it." What makes translating such words difficult is their different meanings depending on intonation or the context.
A common use of the word can be found in the German sentence , which translates to ''The war wasn't lost yet,
after all'' or ''The war was
still not lost.''
Several other grammatical constructs in English may be employed to translate these words for each of their occurrences. The same with slightly changed pronunciation can also mean excuse in defense to a question: ''. . .
but the war was not lost yet (. . . so we fought on).''
A use which relies heavily on intonation and context could produce yet another meaning: "So the war was
really not over yet (as you have been trying to convince me all along)."
Another change of intonation makes the sentence a question. would translate into ''"(You mean) the war was
not yet lost (back then)?"''
Similar difficulties occur with the Dutch words "even", "toch", and, especially, "
gezellig".
Another well-known example comes from the Portuguese or Spanish verbs and , both being translatable as ''to be'' (see
Romance copula). is used with essence or nature, while is used with states or conditions, however. Sometimes this information is not very relevant for the meaning of the whole sentence and the translator will ignore it, whereas at other times it can be retrieved from the context.
When none of these apply, the translator usually uses a
paraphrase
A paraphrase () or rephrase is the rendering of the same text in different words without losing the meaning of the text itself. More often than not, a paraphrased text can convey its meaning better than the original words. In other words, it is a ...
or simply adds words that can convey the right meaning. The following example comes from Portuguese:
:""
:Spanish equivalent:""
:Literal translation: "I am not (apparently/just right now) handsome; I am (essentially/always) handsome."
:Adding words: "I am not handsome today; I am always handsome."
:Paraphrase: "I don't look handsome; I am handsome."
Some South Slavic words that have no English counterparts are ''doček'', a gathering organized at someone's arrival (the closest translation would be ''greeting'' or ''welcome'', although a 'doček' is not necessarily positive); and ''limar'', a sheet metal worker.
Family
Kinship terminology
Kinship terminology is the system used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology; ...
often varies across languages. Terms are often too specific or too general to translate into another language. Some rules used for defining kinship terminology include the following:
Paternal or maternal. For example,
Nordic languages
The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...
,
Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east ...
, and
Chinese language
Chinese ( or ) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and List of ethnic groups in China, many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39& ...
s distinguish paternal and maternal relatives such as paternal grandmother and maternal grandmother. Conversely, son's son and daughter's son are also distinguished. Similarly, aunts and uncles are further divided in many languages.
Gender. Whereas English kinship terms make clear distinction between genders, many languages do not. For example, Thai does not distinguish between siblings by gender, but only by age. Thai also disregards gender when aunts or uncles are younger than their parents, and has one word for all nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. On the flip side, the English word ''cousins'' does not distinguish gender, but many languages do, included
Romance languages
The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
,
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...
, and Chinese languages.
By blood or by marriage. For example, the English word ''uncle'' can refer to a parent's brother, or a husband of a parent's sibling. Many languages, such as
Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
,
Bengali,
Hungarian, and
Chinese distinguish these. This is also true for
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
where e.g. refers to one's mother's brother, but cannot refer to one's mother's sister's husband, named thus (the husband of the maternal aunt).
Full or half sibling. In Arabic, "brother" is often translated into (). However, whilst this word may describe a brother who shares either one or both parents, there is a separate word - () - to describe a brother with whom one shares both parents.
Age relative to oneself or one's parent. For example in
Bengali, father's elder brothers are called (), while younger brothers are called (). Their wives are called () and (), respectively. Another common issue is translating ''brother'' or ''sister'' into Chinese or Japanese, which have separate words for older and younger ones.
Relations by marriage. There is no standard English word for the Italian "", Yiddish "", Greek "", Latin "", Spanish "" or Portuguese "": a gender-neutral collective plural like "co-in-laws". If Harry marries Sally, then in Yiddish, Harry's father is the "" of Sally's father; each mother is the "" of the other. In Romanian, they are "". In Bengali, both fathers are and mothers, . Bengali has / for ''brother'' and / for ''brother-in-law''; for ''son'' and for ''son-in-law''.
Spanish and Portuguese contrast "brother" with "brother-in-law" ("/", "/"); "son" with "son-in-law" ("/", "/"), and similarly for female relatives like "sister-in-law" ("/") and "daughter-in-law" ("/"). Both languages use "" (Sp.) or "/" (varying by dialect), as the relationship between two men that marry siblings (or two women, using the feminine "/" instead). In the English language this relationship would be lumped in with "/" (sibling's husband or spouse's brother) as simply "brother-in-law". This distinction is reflected also in Italian, with for a brother, for a brother in law; etc. In Latin, the distinction between children and children-in-law is also present, with for one's child, for one's spouse's child that is not ours, (and in feminine) for one's child's spouse.
Serbian and
Bosnian have specific terms for relations by marriage. For example, a "sister-in-law" can be a ''"snaha/snaja"'' (brother's wife, though also family-member's wife in general), ''"zaova"'' (husband's sister), ''"svastika"'' (wife's sister) or ''"jetrva"'' (husband's brother's wife). A "brother-in-law" can be a ''"zet"'' (sister's husband, or family-member's husband in general), ''"djever/dever"'' (husband's brother), ''"šurak/šurjak"'' (wife's brother) or ''"badžanak/pašenog"'' (wife's sister's husband). Likewise, the term ''"prijatelj"'' (same as ''"makhatunim"'' in Yiddish, which also translates as ''"friend"'') is also used. Bengali has a number of in-law words. For example, ''Boudi'' (elder brother's wife), ''Shaali'' (wife's sister), ''Shaala'' (wife's younger brother), ''Sambandhi'' (wife's elder brother/Shaali's husband), ''Bhaasur'' (husband's elder brother), ''Deor'' (husband's younger brother) ''Nanad'' (husband's sister), ''Jaa'' (husband's brother's wife), etc. This is also true for Latin, with words such as (husband's brother), (husband's sister), (husband's brother's wife), yet none for the wife's part of the family tree.
In
Russian, fifteen different words cover relations by marriage, enough to confuse many native speakers . There are for example, as in Yiddish, words like "" and "" for "co-in-laws". To further complicate the translator's job, Russian in-laws may choose to address each other familiarly by these titles.
In contrast to all of the above fine distinctions, in American English the term "my brother-in-law" covers "my spouse's brother", "my sibling's husband", and "my spouse's sibling's husband". In British English, the last of these is not considered strictly correct.
Work and school relations
Japanese has a concept, ''
amae'', about the closeness of parent-child relationship, that is supposedly unique to that language and culture as it applies to bosses and workers.
Japanese, Chinese, and Korean have words for classmates and colleagues of different seniority and/or gender. The most well-known example to English speakers is probably the Japanese word (), referring to a senior classmate or colleague.
There are also times when the same concept exists but the practice is different, such as
homeschooling
Homeschooling or home schooling (American English), also known as home education or elective home education (EHE) (British English), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted ...
in Spanish and its practice in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Latin American countries. Translators must discern whether the existing terms convey the same concepts.
Foreign objects
Objects unknown to a culture can actually be easy to translate. For example, in Japanese, ''
wasabi
Wasabi (Japanese language, Japanese: , , or , ) or Japanese horseradish (''Eutrema japonicum'' syn. ''Wasabia japonica'') is a plant of the family Brassicaceae, which also includes horseradish and Mustard plant, mustard in other genus, genera. ...
'' is a
plant
Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...
(''
Wasabia japonica'') used as a spicy
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
ese
condiment
A condiment is a preparation that is added to food, typically after cooking, to enhance the Flavoring, flavour, to complement the dish or to impart a specific flavor. Such specific flavors generally add sweetness or pungency, or sharp or piquant ...
. Traditionally, this plant only grows in Japan. It would be unlikely that someone from a country such as Angola would have a clear understanding of it. However, the easiest way to translate this word is to ''borrow'' it. Or one can use a similar
vegetable's name to describe it. In English this word is translated as ''
wasabi
Wasabi (Japanese language, Japanese: , , or , ) or Japanese horseradish (''Eutrema japonicum'' syn. ''Wasabia japonica'') is a plant of the family Brassicaceae, which also includes horseradish and Mustard plant, mustard in other genus, genera. ...
'' or ''Japanese
horseradish
Horseradish (''Armoracia rusticana'', syn. ''Cochlearia armoracia'') is a perennial plant of the family Brassicaceae (which also includes Mustard plant, mustard, wasabi, broccoli, cabbage, and radish). It is a root vegetable, cultivated and us ...
''. In Chinese, people can still call it ''wasabi'' by its Japanese sound, or pronounce it by its
Hanzi
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one ...
characters, (
pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
: ''shān kuí''). However, wasabi is more frequently called () or () in China and Taiwan, meaning
mustard. One may specify ''yellow mustard'' and ''green mustard'' to avoid confusion.
Another method is using description instead of a single word. For example, languages like Russian and Ukrainian have borrowed words ''Kuraga'' and ''Uruk'' from Turkic languages. While both fruits are now known to the Western world, there are still no terms for them in English. English speakers have to use "dried
apricot
An apricot (, ) is a fruit, or the tree that bears the fruit, of several species in the genus ''Prunus''.
Usually an apricot is from the species '' P. armeniaca'', but the fruits of the other species in ''Prunus'' sect. ''Armeniaca'' are also ...
without core" and "dried apricot with core" instead.
One particular type of foreign object that poses difficulties is the proper noun. As an illustration, consider another example from
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born 15 February 1945) is an American cognitive and computer scientist whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, Strange loop, strange ...
, which he published in one of his "
Metamagical Themas" columns in ''
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...
''. He pondered the question: "''Who is the first lady of Britain?'' Well, first ladies reside at the prime minister's address, and at the time, the woman living at 10 Downing Street was
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
. But a different attribute that first ladies have is that they are married to heads of government, so perhaps a better answer was
''Denis'' Thatcher, but he probably would not have relished the title."
Concepts
Concepts unknown or less known to a culture are difficult to translate because there are no corresponding
lexeme
A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms ta ...
s. When translating US-specific concepts such as
mobile home
A mobile home (also known as a house trailer, park home, trailer, or trailer home) is a prefabrication, prefabricated structure, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site (either by being towed or ...
and
foster children, translators cannot simply
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...
but find ways to adapt the translation such as using a descriptive phrase.
Poetry, puns and wordplay
The two areas which most nearly approach total untranslatability are
poetry
Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...
and
pun
A pun, also known as a paronomasia in the context of linguistics, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from t ...
s; poetry is difficult to translate because of its reliance on the sounds (for example,
rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually the exact same phonemes) in the final Stress (linguistics), stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of rhyming (''perfect rhyming'') is consciou ...
s) and rhythms of the source language; puns, and other similar
semantic
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
wordplay, because of how tightly they are tied to the original language. The oldest well-known examples are probably those appearing in Bible translations, for example,
Genesis 2:7, which explains why God gave
Adam
Adam is the name given in Genesis 1–5 to the first human. Adam is the first human-being aware of God, and features as such in various belief systems (including Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism and Islam).
According to Christianity, Adam ...
this name: "God created Adam out of soil from the ground"; the original Hebrew text reveals the secret, since the word Adam connotes the word ground (being in Hebrew), whereas translating the verse into other languages makes it lose the original pun.
Similarly, consider the Italian adage "": a literal translation is "translator, traitor". The pun is lost, though the meaning persists. A similar solution can be given, however, in Hungarian, by saying , which roughly translates as "translation is distortion".
That being said, many of the translation procedures discussed here can be used in these cases. For example, the translator can compensate for an "untranslatable" pun in one part of a text by adding a new pun in another part of the translated text.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet, and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential playwright ...
's play ''
The Importance of Being Earnest
''The Importance of Being Earnest, a Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde, the last of his four drawing-room plays, following ''Lady Windermere's Fan'' (1892), ''A Woman of No Importance'' (1893) and ''An Ideal Husban ...
'' incorporates in its title a pun (resonating in the last line of the play) that conflates the name Ernest with the adjective of quality ''earnest''. The French title of the translated play is "", replicating and transposing the pun; however, the character Ernest had to be renamed, and the allusion to trickery was lost. (Other French translations include "" (faithful) and "" (loved), with the same idea of a pun on first name / quality adjective.) A recent Hungarian translation of the same play by
Ádám Nádasdy
Ádám Nádasdy (born 15 February 1947) is a Hungary, Hungarian linguistics, linguist and poet. He is professor Emeritus#In_academia, emeritus at the ELTE School of English and American Studies, School of English and American Studies of the ELTE ...
applied a similar solution, giving the subtitle "" (lit. "One must be Szilárd") beside the traditional title "Bunbury", where "" is a male name as well as an adjective meaning "solid", "firm", or "steady". Other languages, like Spanish, usually leave the pun untranslated, as in "", while one translation used the name Severo, which means "severe" or "serious", close to the original English meaning. Catalan translations always use "". This example uses the homophones "Frank" (given name) and "" (honest, free-spoken). Although this same solution would work in Spanish also (""), it carries heavy political connotations in
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
due to
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (born Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general and dictator who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces i ...
's dictatorship (1939–1975), to a point that even this possible title can be taken directly as ironic/sarcastic: literally, "The importance of being Franco", so this alternative was never used. However, the German translation "" (literally "Being Ernst is everything") only changes the name very slightly: in fact (unlike the equivalents in English) the adjective is even spelt exactly as the name ''Ernst'' and, given the position at the beginning of the title, both meanings would be capitalised.
The
Asterix
''Asterix'' ( or , "Asterix the Gauls, Gaul"; also known as ''Asterix and Obelix'' in some adaptations or ''The Adventures of Asterix'') is a Franco-Belgian comics, French comic album book series, series about a Gaulish village which, thanks ...
comic strip is renowned for its French puns; its translators have found many
ingenious English substitutes.
Other forms of wordplay, such as
spoonerism
A spoonerism is an occurrence of speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words of a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and priest William Archibald Spooner, who report ...
s and
palindrome
A palindrome (Help:IPA/English, /ˈpæl.ɪn.droʊm/) is a word, palindromic number, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date "Twosday, 02/02/2020" and th ...
s are equally difficult, and often force hard choices on the translator. For example, take the classic palindrome: "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama". A translator might choose to translate it literally into, say, French – "", if it were used as a caption for a photo of
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), also known as Teddy or T.R., was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt previously was involved in New York (state), New York politics, incl ...
(the chief instigator of the Canal), and sacrifice the palindrome. But if the text is meant to give an ''example'' of a palindrome, they might elect to sacrifice the literal sense and substitute a French palindrome, such as "" ('A boulder swept away the horned animal').
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born 15 February 1945) is an American cognitive and computer scientist whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, analogy-making, Strange loop, strange ...
discusses the problem of translating a palindrome into Chinese, where such wordplay is theoretically impossible, in his book
– which is devoted to the issues and problems of translation, with particular emphasis on the translation of poetry. Another example given by Hofstadter is the translation of the poem ''
Jabberwocky
"Jabberwocky" is a Nonsense verse, nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel ''Through the Looking-Glass'', the sequel to ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' ...
'' by
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...
, with its wealth of
neologism
In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...
s and
portmanteau
In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together. words, into a number of foreign tongues.
A notable
Irish joke is that it is not possible to translate
mañana into
Irish as the Irish "don't have a word that conveys that degree of urgency".
Iconicity
According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "Iconicity might be the reason for refraining from translating ''Hallelujah'' and ''Amen'' in so many languages, as if the sounds of such basic religious notions have to do with their
referent
A referent ( ) is a person or thing to which a name – a linguistic expression or other symbol – refers. For example, in the sentence ''Mary saw me'', the referent of the word ''Mary'' is the particular person called Mary who is being spoken o ...
s themselves – as if by losing the sound, one might lose the meaning. Compare this to the Kabbalistic power of letters, for example in the case of
gematria
In numerology, gematria (; or , plural or ) is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word, or phrase by reading it as a number, or sometimes by using an alphanumeric cipher. The letters of the alphabets involved have standar ...
, the method of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures by interchanging words whose letters have the same numerical value when added. A simple example of gematric power might be the famous proverb (), or lit. "entered wine went out secret", that is, "wine brings out the truth", ''
in vino veritas''. The gematric value of , or wine, is 70 (י=10; י=10; ן=50) and this is also the gematric value of , or secret, (ס=60; ו=6; ד=4). Thus, this sentence, according to many Jews at the time, had to be true."
Barbarous names are
magical formula
In ceremonial magic, a magical formula or a word of power is a word that is believed to have specific supernatural effects. They are words whose meaning illustrates principles and degrees of understanding that are often difficult to relay ...
s often taken from foreign languages, but corrupted or meaningless to the magician.
Iamblichus
Iamblichus ( ; ; ; ) was a Neoplatonist philosopher who determined a direction later taken by Neoplatonism. Iamblichus was also the biographer of the Greek mystic, philosopher, and mathematician Pythagoras. In addition to his philosophical co ...
discusses barbarous names, warning magicians not to translate them even if their original meaning is discovered, due to the belief that the power of the names resided in their sound, not their meaning.
[The New Encyclopedia of the Occult, by John Michael Greer, Llewellyn, 2005, p. 58-59][The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy, by Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Facts on File (]Infobase Publishing
Infobase is an American publisher of databases, reference book titles and textbooks geared towards the North American library, secondary school, and university-level curriculum markets. Infobase operates a number of prominent imprints, including ...
), 2006, p.31
In the modern era,
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley ( ; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the pr ...
also argued that the supposed effectiveness of barbarous names rested in their utterance, not their meaning.
Chapter IX: Of Silence and Secrecy: And of the Barbarous Names of Evocation
from Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley ( ; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the pr ...
's Magick in Theory and Practice, hosted at the Internet Sacred Text Archive
The Internet Sacred Text Archive (ISTA) is a Santa Cruz, California-based website dedicated to the preservation of electronic public domain religious texts.
History
The website was first opened to the public on March 9, 1999, by John Bruno Hare ...
See also
* Adam Jacot de Boinod
* Indeterminacy of translation
The indeterminacy of translation is a thesis propounded by 20th-century American analytic philosopher W. V. Quine. The classic statement of this thesis can be found in his 1960 book ''Word and Object'', which gathered together and refined much of Q ...
* Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...
* Terminology
Terminology is a group of specialized words and respective meanings in a particular field, and also the study of such terms and their use; the latter meaning is also known as terminology science. A ''term'' is a word, Compound (linguistics), com ...
* Terms with no direct English translation
* Texas sharpshooter fallacy
* Translation
Translation is the communication of the semantics, meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English la ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
BBC News: Congo word "most untranslatable"
Untranslatable Words from Treasure Languages
{{Authority control
Translation studies
Semantics
Linguistic error