Untranslatable Words

Problems for translators:

The Times has translated for you the most untranslatable word in the world.

The word is ilunga, from the Bantu language of Tshiluba, and means a person ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.

It came top of a list drawn up with the help of 1,000 translators, narrowly beating shlimazl, Yiddish for a chronically unlucky person and radioukacz, Polish for a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain.

In the English language, googly (as in cricket), Spam (as in tins) and gobbledegook (as in every Plain English Campaign press release) were among the most untranslatable words, but the top place was, surprisingly, reserved for plenipotentiary.

It’s a shame that the article isn’t more choosy about what to include. There are, surely, interesting and uninteresting untranslatables. They’re interesting if they represent a concept we simply don’t have in English; uninteresting if they’re just culture-specific. Ilunga is genuinely odd, but radioukacz? – well, frankly, who cares if there’s not an English word for “a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain”? It’s hardly a major gap in the language. Similarly googly is not interesting as an untranslatable word; it’s just one of a whole range of sporting metaphors in English (in this case, in English English). And Spam? – surely that should be spam, ie unwanted e-mail crap.

The Portuguese saudade is one of my favourites though: the spirit of Fado (try this or this for a modern take).

What we do in English of course is simply import the word. If any of these words met a need, we’d appropriate them. Schadenfreude is the example usually cited – often with the snide remark that it would have to be the Germans, wouldn’t it, to coin a word for pleasure in the misfortune of others: a little unfair considering how often it’s used. Is there a word for taking over a useful concept while denigrating those who originated it?