The Polish word https://doesnottranslate.com/kurwido-ek/ seems like a great explanation for why some people took too long to leave, as described in the neighboring “Great Resignation” thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29937305
Does Not Translate
101–110 of 133 posts
Re: Does Not Translate
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “Joie de vivre” is indeed translatable into English, and the translation is just “joie de vivre”. I’m a native English speaker and I’ve never heard of the expression “Joie de vivre”, so I don’t understand how “Joie de vivre” is the English translation of “Joie de vivre”.
Yeah, it's such a cliché. Using too many foreign words is such a faux pas, it reveals the bourgeois character of the speaker. No no no, a real connoisseur of the English language won't have such a lassaiz-faire attitude and accept just any fancy word du jour. That would be so gauche indeed. Au contraire I'm blasé at such attempts. The real English entrepreneurial avant-garde clique has so many choices a la carte, so…
Bravo.
Re: Does Not Translate
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surprising to me. I’m an avid reader of books and news and movie watcher and I’ve never heard this phrase once. I also took 3 years of French, went to a 4 year college and I’ve reviewed lists of foreign phrases commonly used in English with my kids, all while somehow dodging this phrase for ~40 years!
Well, I’m 50 and I’ve heard it before. Maybe you just need to live for 10 more years ;-) https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Joie+de+vivr...
Or maybe I needed to be born 10 years earlier :)
Re: Does Not Translate
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “Joie de vivre” is indeed translatable into English, and the translation is just “joie de vivre”. I’m a native English speaker and I’ve never heard of the expression “Joie de vivre”, so I don’t understand how “Joie de vivre” is the English translation of “Joie de vivre”.
Yeah, it's such a cliché. Using too many foreign words is such a faux pas, it reveals the bourgeois character of the speaker. No no no, a real connoisseur of the English language won't have such a lassaiz-faire attitude and accept just any fancy word du jour. That would be so gauche indeed. Au contraire I'm blasé at such attempts. The real English entrepreneurial avant-garde clique has so many choices a la carte, so…
Excellent.
One funny thing I've noticed with French EFL speakers of medium proficiency is that they too think all those loanwords from French aren't English words. It's always fun to troll them dropping a en route and look at their reaction.
Re: Does Not Translate
#105Interesting, but the premise is nonsense. Obviously these phrases and words do translate. They are translated on the page, into English.
But when people say something “doesn’t translate”, they usually mean (and are understood as meaning) one or both of two things — that it doesn’t translate succinctly, or it doesn’t translate exactly. Japanese honorifics, for example, probably fall under both.
Well, both of those things are true, and are true for any two languages. Easily and succinctly are not absolute. They are functions of the two languages being discussed, and of the two people talking. By the definitions presented here, literally nothing is translatable, you’ve just chosen to an arbitrary line.
My primary objection to this entire exercise is that it implies a linguistic preciousness that is really quite superficial. It also implies that “some languages are more cut out than others for certain purposes” and this is absolutely not the case. All languages are equally capable of meaning, and the fact that one language has one word for something and another uses many words for the same thing… that itself doesn’t “mean” anything about either language. It barely says anything about the cultures that use that language.
Re: Does Not Translate
#106Is this for words or expressions? Clicking through a few, it seems both. I'm not sure it's fair to say phrases don't translate...they just aren't used word for word. I think single words that have no single word translation in other languages is far more fascinating. Like say, Schadenfreude.
It's only a single word because the gluing together words is a national German pastime (and, more importantly, a feature of the German language). That makes the distinction of expression vs word somewhat meaningless.
Understood, but even gluing you couldn't come close in say, English. I mean, you could say HarmJoy but without a definition nobody would know what it means. I'd assume self harm. Gluing together words is a neat feature that I wish English did more often.
Re: Does Not Translate
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “Joie de vivre” is indeed translatable into English, and the translation is just “joie de vivre”. I’m a native English speaker and I’ve never heard of the expression “Joie de vivre”, so I don’t understand how “Joie de vivre” is the English translation of “Joie de vivre”.
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Joie+de+vivr... It has been estimated that English has more than a million words, what percentage do you think you actually know?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44569277
> Typically native speakers know 15,000 to 20,000 word families - or lemmas - in their first language.
Sounds about right to me.
Re: Does Not Translate
#108[deleted]
Re: Does Not Translate
#109I’m always wary of these lists, because if you search for the languages you know you always see that most of them are actually translatable and/or rare expressions that nobody uses.
Also, a lot of the French ones, like “joie de vivre”, have been borrowed into English verbatim. “Joie de vivre” is indeed translatable into English, and the translation is just “joie de vivre”. To claim otherwise would be like saying that the concept of chile pepper can only be expressed in Nahuatl.
Google claims the translation to English is "joy of living" "joie de vivre"isn't exactly a common phrase in English
Re: Does Not Translate
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, it's such a cliché. Using too many foreign words is such a faux pas, it reveals the bourgeois character of the speaker. No no no, a real connoisseur of the English language won't have such a lassaiz-faire attitude and accept just any fancy word du jour. That would be so gauche indeed. Au contraire I'm blasé at such attempts. The real English entrepreneurial avant-garde clique has so many choices a la carte, so…
Haha! I followed you until you went pure French.
He never went "pure French"