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Does Not Translate

doesnottranslate.com

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Re: Does Not Translate

#111

Post by CamTin »

chrismcb wrote: post #109
School-Cotton wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In my experience, "joie de vivre" isn't really everyday vocabulary, but then I've never heard the phrase "joy of living" spoken even once. Google trends seems to bear this out: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Joie%20de%...

Re: Does Not Translate

#112

Post by vba616 »

tremon wrote: post #64
School-Cotton wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also, many expressions have direct translations (sometimes even literal) in other languages from the same family/geographic area. For example, "joie de vivre" has a direct Dutch translation "levenslust". The German words "scheinheilig" and "totschweigen" have direct Dutch equivalents "schijnheilig" and "doodzwijgen", and the Swedish words "förrgår" and "övermorgon" have direct Dutch equivalents "eergisteren" and "ove…

>levenslust

I'm not sure of the origin, but "lust for life" is an expression that's been used in English for at least a century, it seems. It was the name of a biography of Vincent Van Gogh.

The earliest reference on this page seems to be a German film, so maybe it comes from German: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lust_for_Life

Hmm, maybe it goes back further - Google Books seems to have some instances from the 19th century. A few are negative, basically using the phrase to mean being worldly and not spiritual, a bad thing or even a "curse".

In that sense it wouldn't seem to be the same meaning, but maybe it changed over time.

Re: Does Not Translate

#113

Post by vidarh »

wunderlust wrote: post #78
vidarh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or "glee". Glee is just much broader, but given the right context it's a fine synonym.

This seems problematic. "Given the right context" a lot of words could be synonyms. It seems like it's implicit in the meaning of "synonymous" that two words share the same meaning if they're interchangeable (in their respective languages) in all contexts.

Synonyms are rarely exact matches, and even more rarely exact matches without additional context.

Long and extended are synonyms when talking about length, but not family for example.

Re: Does Not Translate

#114

Post by vba616 »

dmitriid wrote: post #73
jng wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. "I adore you" is literally "te adoro". "Querer" in Spanish just means "to love", it's a synonym to "amar", also "to love". "Querer" is more common language and applied non-romantically all the time, and "amar" is more poetic and veers more towards romantic love, but they both mean the same. BTW, "querer" means "to want", but when it is used to convey love (easy to tell by context), it doesn't ring of obje…

> "Querer" is more common language and applied non-romantically all the time, and "amar" is more poetic and veers more towards romantic love, but they both mean the same. It's interesting from the point of view of English and Russian. When we tal about people: - In English `love` can be used for both romantic and non-romantic love. - In Russian `love` (especially nowadays) feels to be almost exclusively either romant…

>You can't really tell your friend you love them

You might say in English to a friend "I love you" meaning "I'm bemused by your quirks, but I'm fond of you anyway".

I wonder how that translates.

Re: Does Not Translate

#115

Post by vba616 »

323 wrote: post #31

Some non-English languages are importing English words/phrases when the English one represents an idea that it's a bit more complicated to express in the non-English language. I'm not talking about technical terms. Random example: "work/life balance"

I remember little from French class in junior high, but I do remember

   "Q: Comment ça va?
    A: Ça va."
It struck me many years later, that people at work were saying almost a literal translation in English:

   "How goes it?"
   "It goes."
To my knowledge, they weren't Francophones and I never heard any French there.

Re: Does Not Translate

#116

Post by timeon »

qqii wrote: post #83
hk__2 wrote: post #27

I’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.

Having checked my own language I'd describe the list not as being unable to translated outright, but of susinct ideas that are not normally expressed in English. A literal or detailed and contextful translation does not express the same "feeling" as in the native tongue, which you could argue as a what is impossible to translate.

> feeling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connotation

Re: Does Not Translate

#117

Post by drdeca »

School-Cotton wrote: post #40
ILMostro7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you do: s/Esperantists/English-speakers/ and "non-English" AFAIK, the English language is very verbose. If there are so many words, many of which have very similar meaning to others, then many of those words are not needed? Should be removed, even, until everyone forgets them and doesn't miss them at all?

All human languages have redundancy, ambiguity, inconsistencies, etc. English isn’t special in this regard. > Should be removed Language is an emergent social phenomenon, not something anyone really controls or directs, so what “should” be done with it is a bit meaningless.

Doesn’t France have their like, organization which defines what officially valid french is?

Re: Does Not Translate

#118

Post by hrbf »

The list is not actively maintained in any way. I immediately found a rather offensive term with the description of a job title, when in reality it just being an offensive slur. Three comments mention that. The entry (from 2017) is unchanged to this day.

I don’t see the point of such a site.

Re: Does Not Translate

#119

Post by y4mi »

jonshariat wrote: post #53
hk__2 wrote: post #27

I’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.

I remember growing up in a 2nd generation home and with many immigrant friends, people would always say "Oh there isn't a word for that in english, its very unique" and then I would tell them the word which was usually not a common word but required some vocabulary knowledge. English is also the largest with over 200k words. Not to say there isn't words like this just that it takes deep vocabulary knowledge in two la…

there are a lot of words that dont map directly onto another word.

heck, i'd argue that most abstract words are just close-ish approximations, which can be used to convey the same thing, but are also useable in different contexts with significantly changed meaning.

Take yesterday's wordle for example: tangy. few languages have something that maps onto exactly this meaning. Its still easy to translate it with a sentence, but its likely going to be more than one word. And the chosen translation will likely change significantly depending on the context the word is used in.

Re: Does Not Translate

#120

Post by School-Cotton »

drdeca wrote: post #117
School-Cotton wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All human languages have redundancy, ambiguity, inconsistencies, etc. English isn’t special in this regard. > Should be removed Language is an emergent social phenomenon, not something anyone really controls or directs, so what “should” be done with it is a bit meaningless.

Doesn’t France have their like, organization which defines what officially valid french is?

In theory yes, but their decisions have virtually zero influence on real-world speech.
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