It’s every translator’s nightmare. There's a word in front of you, you know exactly what it means, you can feel it, and there is simply nothing on the other side to swap it for. So you write three words instead of one and silently cry to yourself while you do it.
Okay, maybe that last bit’s just me, but anyone who likes to translate song lyrics, specifically, will know exactly what I’m talking about. Songs are built out of precisely the words that refuse to sit still: feelings, atmospheres, in-jokes, the specific ache of a specific place. They’re beautifully poetic and, for a translator, beautifully annoying!
The classic is saudade, from Portuguese. English speakers usually reach for "longing" or "nostalgia", and both just don’t quite do it. I don’t speak Portuguese, so can’t and won’t pretend to fully know what I’m talking about, but I understand saudade to describe the presence of an absence, a fondness for something that may never come back and possibly never existed in the first place. Warm and heartbreaking at the same time.
Then there's Schadenfreude, from German, which English basically didn’t even try to translate. It represents the pleasure you take in someone else's misfortune. It’s not that English speakers never had the feeling; they just never quite got around to giving it a name!
There’s also a nice musical example we can bring into the discussion: duende, in Spanish, means ‘elf’ but that’s fairly easy to translate (as I’ve just proven!) It also, even more magically, refers to the moment a performance stops being a performance. Not skill, not technique, something else entirely. A sort of spark you either felt in the room, or didn't.
Worth saying, English can be equally tricky to translate. Try lending "cheesy" into a language that hasn't already borrowed it. Or "serendipity." Or I dare you to try translating the exact tone of a British "lovely", which can mean anything from genuine delight to barely concealed despair.
So, here's this month's question:
What's a word in your language that simply doesn't translate?
A feeling, a texture, a kind of weather, an unbearably specific social situation. Maybe it's the word that turns up in every other song you work on and sends you into a small crisis each time it does.
Tell us the word, what it actually means, and if there's a song that uses it nicely, tell us that too. Send it over via this Typeform and we'll gather the best of them into a piece for next month's edition, in your own words.
Between us we cover a fair chunk of the world's languages, so we're expecting some absolute gems!
