掲示板 Forums - untranslatable japanese words

can you name some words or phrases that are difficult to translate in english or your native language? just interesting is there such words.

My own point of view is that there is no such thing as an untranslatable word. When someone says something is untranslatable, what they mean is that they don’t know how to translate it.

Awwwsomeってなんか可愛いなぁ

To add a bit to the topic, you can eventually translate every things but you will also almost every time lose something in the process. Mainly, either the usage or the meaning. Depending also on your definition of "translation" more or less things translatable or not. You can even say that almost all word are untranslatable or the opposite depending on how hard you go with your definition. So, it really depends on that too =p

But to give an example that I have personal experienced (and even got into a fight because of that), you can take the word 大変 (たいへん, taihen) which is a pretty common word. I you check the word on renshuu, you will see that it has those definitions:

1. very, greatly, terribly, awfully
2. (adjectival nouns) (noun) immense, enormous, great
3. (adjectival nouns) (noun) serious, grave, dreadful, terrible
4. (adjectival nouns) (noun) difficult, hard, challenging
5. (noun) (archaism) major incident, disaster
   

But for me, this word has only one translation which is... "big abnormal" or "abnormally" x). Because, I've fun trying to capture both the usage and meaning when it come to translating. And also because I'm a nerd sometimes on those things that should get cured. So, all the other are "incorrect". But why are those incorrect? Well, 2, 3, 4 are "usage translation", they preserved the way the word is used but not the meaning. 大変, by itself, does not mean either of these. 1 preserved a bit of the meaning and usage but is still not perfect. Lastly 5, especially "major incident", is the closest one but it's also an archaism. So that's why I prefer personally to have "大変" as "big abnormal" or "abnormally" which is, in fact, literally the meaning of the kanji. 大 mean "big" and 変 mean "abnormal". It's weird in english and like 試験猿 point it out, it's also closer to the etymological meaning but personally, I prefer that for various reason and it's also the only "correct" or more precisely "adapted" for me. It's more useful in my opinion.

A bit like "hard" can be used to say "difficult" in english, well, 大変 can be used the same way to say "difficult". But while in english, "hard" has the base meaning or image of "something really solid" to express difficulty, in japanese, the base meaning or image is "big abnormal". As in "something abnormally difficult" or "serious" or "great", etc. It work for all the other usage as long as you keep that image in your head. It's the exact same process but just with a different starting point.
That's why I prefer to keep that translation in my head. Because it help to remember both the meaning and usage. And also avoid trap when back translating (translating from english to japanese with a translation that preserved only the meaning or usage).

So there is a lot of way that can make a word untranslatable. If you listen to me or use the same criteria, well 大変 is untranslatable and a lot other word too. In context, saying "big abornormal" or "abornormally" in english will feel a bit wrong most of the time. But if you are more flexible, well like ポールおじちゃん, you can translate almost everything. Especially if you ignore the different meaning that a word can have and just focus on one. Or if you focus on one aspect (usage or meaning). It's also two different school of translation btw. For books for example, you want to have a natural english most of the time and because of that, you will mostly usage translation. But for a technical document, a scientific concept, etc you probably want to preserve the meaning more. And ask two different people you will probably have two different set of word, nothing or everything. Untranslatable words are just words that are, more than other, difficult to translate and often lost a lot of their different meaning/nuances when you try to translate them.

Anyway, if you didn't guess by now, I'm one of the extremist one that can spend way too much arguing why this translation is incorrect . And now I should go eat because that what I should have done a long time ago if I didn't spent so much time writing this .
Hope it will useful to some people at least