In 2004 a survey of thousands of linguists around the world was carried out to assess what terms, phrases, expressions, etc. were the most difficult to translate.
Why are certain terms so difficult to translate?
Do all words have an equivalent in all other languages?
Or is there a cultural factor that determines our language? Sometimes an existing term in a given culture cannot exist in another, for the simple fact that this concept does not exist culturally in the other.
Here are some of the more complex terms to translate:
Ilunga is the hardest word to translate the world. It belongs to the Tshiluba or Luba-Kasai language, more than six million speakers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ilunga is the ability to forgive the person for an abuse or offense for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third.
Shlimazl is a term from Yiddish language. It designates a person who is a chronically unlucky.
Radioukacz is a Polish word referring to a person who worked as a telegraph acting for the resistance movements in Soviet Russia.
Naa is a Japanese term that is used only in the Kansai area, to emphasize statements or to agree with someone.
Altahmam is a word in Arabic that designates a specific type of deep sadness.
Gezellig is an adjective in Dutch designating a place I could call warm, homey, pleasant.
Saudade in Portuguese refers to a kind of nostalgia.
Selathirupavar comes from the Tamil language, and designates a certain type of truancy.
Pochemuchka is a Russian word that refers to that person asking many questions.
Klloshar comes from Albanian and describes a man who is a loser.
There are other words in other languages that have no equivalent in any language. For example, for the Eskimos there are many terms that indicate the various shades of white in snow. But for some it’s just white.
Is our job just translation? Or is interpreting another language?
(Spanish version: http://blog-de-traduccion.trustedtranslations.com/palabras-muy-dificiles-de-traducir-2010-10-20.html)
Tags: arabic translation, Dutch translation, Japanese translation, Polish translation, tamil, translation project
This list is quite dubious. I’m a native speaker of Polish and never heard the word “radioukacz”, my friends neither. It also doesn’t exist in any dictionary of Polish I know about. And in google it only occurs with reference to this list. So there.
“A type of nostalgia” for “saudades” is woefully inadequate.
It’s more like a deep longing, like missing someone or something so much that it hurts.
Well, I have to disagree.There is no hurting in the meaning of “saudade”. It is indeed a feeling of longing, but it is never related to hurting or pain as it is to hoping. It’s hard to translate this word as it expresses a very peculiar form of nostalgia found in Brazilian people, relating to their roots: African slaves were taken to Brazil by the Portuguese and their hope for deliverance was all they had left. That and the Latin roots of Portugal were mixed and resulted into this one of a kind sense of nostalgia that distinguishes both Brazilian and Portuguese and results in fados and bossa nova as well.(Sorry, I’m a Portuguese-Spanish translator, please excuse my English!)
These words are normally called “realia” in linguistics and translation studies. These words reflect “domestic” reality in a language, different from other languages. Russian like many other languages has also got lots of realia. Nowadays “realia matters” are vividly realized in product localization.
V. interesting. I like “pochemushka”, so simple yet tough to translate so succintly.
Hi Jarosław, it was not difficult to find the word “radioukacz” in Google: “Polish – a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain” http://www.wordnik.com/words/radioukacz
Also there is an Article about that word called “The hardest word to translate in the world”, here is the link: http://www.proz.com/forum/translation_theory_and_practice/184777-the_hardest_word_to_translate_in_the_world.html
[...] Naturally, this word comes from a country in which asking too many questions will result in death. But maybe more surprisingly, it originates from the children’s book Alyosha Pochemuchka, which is the story of a young boy who constantly asks “Why?” There are no copies of it online, so we can only assume it’s a parable about a Russian child who started getting too nosy about government affairs and was quickly taken care of. [...]
Some of the words here are easy to translate in spanish language.
Shlimazl= Salado (a)
Naa= De veras, ajá, claro, pues sí, obvio, claro,sí…
Pochemuchka= Preguntón, perico.
Klloshar= Perdedor, wey (buey), pend**o
Here is the article from the BBC:
Congo word ‘most untranslatable’
Off – a simple word in english but impossible to translate in portuguese.
I challenge anyone to try.
Tony Vincent
I am native Albanian and a translator also, “klloshar” is not Albanian and definitely not the remarkable one for not getting properly translated. There are many others, this article is very innacurate
Tony Vincent here has it right. That’s why you don’t translate words. You translate concepts.
It is crucial to understand the concept behind the words in the source language, and to find appropiate words that represent that concept in the target language.
Hello, interesting indeed, but there are some words in German that can’t find translation.
They are so precise, that we have to use them in German.
Mensch
Leitmotiv
Gestalt
There’s a word in Portuguese , that is complex , give it a try
Jeito. ( dar um jeito, desse jeito, não tem jeito, etc.)
And now, if you help me to understand, this, I would be thankful!!!
Maria Bernadette
The argentinian spanish word for Shlimazl is “yeta”