
The Magic of “Untranslatable” Words - sidko
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-magic-of-untranslatable-words/#
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laretluval
The idea that "our world [is] parsed and circumscribed as it is by the limits
of our vocabulary" is nuts. Just because there's not a one-to-one
correspondence between a word in a language and a word in another, does not
mean you can't express the same content through a combination of words and
sentences.

The fact that the author was able to write this article and convey these
concepts in English shows that the idea that vocabulary limits our experience
is incoherent.

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kemayo
The idea is that it shapes your thoughts. You're drawn to things that are
easier to express. It's not that you _can 't_ express any arbitrary concept,
but if you happen to have a concise word for something then you're more likely
to use that than to try to ramble through something that takes a paragraph of
explanation.

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k__
can't really relate to that.

I often have thoughts that can't be phrased in language

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StevenRayOrr
> I often have thoughts that can't be phrased in language

Is it that they can't be phrased or that you can't phrase them? I often have
thoughts that I can't express through drawing, but that doesn't mean it is an
impossibility. I think that we often ignore that the act of putting ideas or
thoughts to words is a skill that can be made easier through training.

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TelmoMenezes
That does not mean that all human experience is communicable. In fact,
internal mental states are only communicable to the extent that they are
universal. Suppose I am eating cake and you ask me what it tastes like. I say
strawberry.

Ok, but now supposed that you never tasted strawberrys. How do I describe in
language the flavor of strawberry to someone who never tasted them? I can make
an approximation based on flavors you know, but once you taste strawberrys you
realize that, although what I said is true, it does not convey the sensation
of eating strawberrys at all.

Even more: the less types of fruit you have tasted, the harder it is to convey
an approximation of the flavor of strawberrys through language. So a lot
hinges on culture and shared experiences.

Languages come from different cultures and sets of shared experiences, so it
is natural that they develop more conceptual density in some things than
others, and it is also natural that the grammar more naturally fits a certain
way of thinking and seeing the world. You can discuss German philosophy in
English, but it is a bit clunky. If you ever had the experience of learning a
foreign language, you probably felt that you achieved proficiency when you
were finally able to "bend" your thought process like the locals do.

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newman8r
Aldous huxley describes the idea that our own minds are "island universes" and
that the way those we call "geniuses" think is an experience that can be
described but never fully communicated, "that there is little or no common
ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling.
Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten"

[http://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPe...](http://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerception.pdf)

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Houshalter
There is an interesting concept in machine learning called "word vectors" or
word2vec. They measure how often words occur near each other, and then try to
reduce it to a vector that carries most of that information. This results in
similar words having similar vectors. And even a very interesting result that
you can do math on them. E.g. "king"-"man"+"woman" gives a word vector very
close to "queen". I imagine this is at least somewhat similar to how words are
represented in the human brain.

I wonder if you looked at the space of all word vectors, and found areas where
words were missing. Do to some quirk of language, there was no word to
represent that point in concept space. You could also compared the vector
space for multiple different languages, and automatically determine what words
don't have equivalents.

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newman8r
Seems like these could be visualized in interesting ways using trees/graph
theory. I worked on a project called wordTempo that had an interesting
approach, if anyone is interested in discussing

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jtrip
I'm interested. Did you apply graph theory to categorise words and language?
Was it machine learning or was it more hand-crafted algorithms?

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newman8r
Kiasu on his list is essentially 'FOMO' \- fear of missing out. I think
acronyms are an interesting way to integrate some of these untranslatable
words into our own cultural lexicon.

[http://www.drtimlomas.com/#!lexicography/cm4mi](http://www.drtimlomas.com/#!lexicography/cm4mi)

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smallnamespace
There are also vocabulary items that do have direct translations into other
languages, but none with the same precise connotation.

For example, 斯文 from Chinese most directly translates as 'refined' or
'cultured' in English.

In Chinese, the term has a strong positive connotation and can be used an
almost any context to compliment any person; it carries the implication that
the person is of good character and education.

In American English, 'refined' feels mostly neutral (shading into a pejorative
with 'effete') and while 'cultured' has a positive connotation, it doesn't
directly speak to the person's character.

What we see is that cultural norms and values become embedded in the
vocabulary of languages. Even a directly, literal translation will not capture
the same implied attitude. That's why translations of books and the like tend
to avoid close word-for-word readings.

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pbhjpbhj
>In American English, 'refined' feels mostly neutral (shading into a
pejorative with 'effete') and while 'cultured' has a positive connotation, it
doesn't directly speak to the person's character. //

Your point still stands I think but it sounds like you're describing "classy"
in en-gb.

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smallnamespace
I don't know about en-gb, but classy in en-us seems to me mostly focused on
the person's outward appearance and mannerisms.

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pbhjpbhj
It's often used in en-gb in a sarcastic insult way to denigrate [in the sense
of disparage!!] someone's behaviour "yeah, real classy mate" but that only
works because its use conveys the opposite meaning without the sarcasm.

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_nalply
Signed Languages of the Deaf people have many «untranslatable» expressions.
Especially of forms, movement and dynamics like the way a flock of birds is
flying around in the sky, or the specific way a toon is squashed in an
accident and pops up again.

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adrianratnapala
To what extent can speakers of other languages compensate using gesticulation?

I am sure gesticulation is much cruder, but it has an advantage too: the signs
for toon-squishing don't have to share configuration space with a big
vocubulary of ordinary words.

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dr_zoidberg
Well, there's a saying amongst italians (and italian descendants) that in
order to shut an italian up, you have to tie his/her hands. Conversely, they
say you are never "trully speaking italian" until you start gesticulating as
much as a native-speaker :)

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gardano
As a musician, I've often wondered how a performer whose native language
contained such words as "allegro", "largo", "andante" interpreted those
markings vs me, whose native language does not contain those words.

To me, "allegro" is a tempo marking, not a state of being, for the most part.

I'm not actually sure who is getting the short end of the stick, in this
particular instance, to tell you the truth.

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frenchy
It's easy to assume that a word has some sort of underlying notion, and that
an Italian might think of "largo" slightly differently because it also means
"generous" or "free". However, in practice, words often develop distinct
meanings that don't necessarily affect each other. For example, the notion of
bar (a musical notation, a pole, an alcohol establishment, or the law exam)
are quite separate even if they may have had some common ancestry.

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gardano
I am thinking it's a question of filters. I first encountered 'despacio' in a
piece of music. Now that I'm living in a spanish-speaking country, whenever I
come up to that word, the first filter is that piece of music; the second
filter is the actual meaning of the word.

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patrec
Amusingly one of these untranslatable words is is in fact both a direct back
translation from another language and has actually taken on an entirely
different meaning.

"Take the German noun Treppenwitz, which literally means ‘staircase wit’: that
all too common phenomenon of a witty rejoinder that comes to mind just after
an interaction!"

Only that's not the meaning in German.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier)

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pbhjpbhj
Is there an explanation for how the modern usage you're describing of
_treppenwitz_ relates to staircases?

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patrec
Well, I think the development was that Treppenwitz originally was just a
Germanisation of l'esprit d'escalier. However Hertslet's book "Der Treppenwitz
der Weltgeschichte" (The Treppenwitz of world history) mentioned on the
Wikipedia page became a well known phrase and caused a shift in meaning,
although the usage in the title of the book itself was still basically the
original one.

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newman8r
Does anyone know if there is a word that roughly expresses: A feeling of
anxiety or unease because you strongly believe there is a problem with a thing
but don't know exactly what

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samatman
Foreboding.

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newman8r
[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/227950/a-word-
to-...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/227950/a-word-to-describe-
the-feeling-that-you-are-forgetting-something) actually I just found this.
Also saw the term "nagging feeling" a few times and they mention "hyper
vigilance"

Also, it seems like it is some form of dissonance - I'm going to try to nail
it down lol

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newman8r
A similar idea is that of abandoned tech and terminated/less lucrative
branches of tech within functional branches, like image display tech (I.e.
mechanical TV>crt>plasma>lcd>oled)w where research grinds nearly to a halt. We
can learn a lot by looking back and seeing some odd tech that was a neat
demonstration 100 years ago, that we basically forgot about, but might make
commercial sense today.

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xenadu02
For those who speak multiple languages: can you think of some examples
(besides technical words) that don't have clean translations into languages
besides English?

Surely there must be some... English speakers (especially native ones) just
don't consider them to be notable due to familiarity.

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choosername
There's no such thing as the "Untranslatable" Word if universal grammar is for
actual. At least up to turing completenes, as any language should suffice to
describe a turing machine. Yeah, I don't know about "Magic".

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jrjarrett
So are there single English words that are somehow untranslatable into some
other language?

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syngrog66
problem: in language L there is no word with meaning M

solution: propose/coin new word W in language L with meaning M

