About robertstevenson
Dr. Robert Stevenson is a Professor of Journalism and Director of Student Publications for the Department of Mass Communications and Theater at Lander University in Greenwood, SC. He received the Distinguished Faculty of the Year award for 2007-'08, and the Lander University Young Faculty Scholar Award in 2005-06. Stevenson also serves as chair of the Lander University American Democracy Project. First and Formost I am a dad of two wonderful boys.
You learn something new everyday. I just found out that I am a Shlimazl.
There is a Swedish word ” Lagom ” that translates into “not too much and not too little. Which loses much of its power in translation. Espcially considering that much of the socialistic swedish society is based on the “lagom” principle. Apparently Swedish is the only language that has a single word for the meaning. Most other languages uses either a descriptive phrase or a full sentence to convey the same message.
Most translations will lose the cultural weight of the word and just translate it to the exact meaning.
Good article though, i think that most will forget that translation will never be right without interpretation of the actual words used.
In english, it’s called the “Goldilocks” principle.
How about the Welsh town named
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
yep it is one word.
It translates as ‘St Mary’s church in the hollow of the white hazel near a rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave’.
That is the most awesome translation of anything ever (even if it might not be accurate).
What a cool article!
You’re such a pochemucka!
Watch out; you’re edging past shlimazl and getting dangerously close to klloshar…
hmm, not sure about the Tamil word… there are many more hard words to translate in Tamil language! This one is very simple in terms of using Tamil as a foreign language!
Figures that word comes from the Congo where women are routinely raped and beaten as a result of war and ethnic conflict.
Sorry couldn’t help that, it is off topic, but the first thing which came to mind.
I can so see myself using the ‘klloshar’ word now, lol. yay bigger vocab now =D
try malay/indonesian “lah”, chinese “mah”, and indian “rei,” “bei,” and “rah”
I think there are other Japanese words that are harder to translate.
But an interesting read, none-the-less.
I am portuguese. “Saudade” is what you feel, when you miss someone or something.
Congrats on being the featured blog Rob!
Ilunga, described as a word from the Bantu language of Tshiluba, was said to mean “a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time”.
in arabic it means:
الکاظم
in farsi(persian) we called it:
saboor صبور
so i don’t think that it’s really hard to translate it.i already did it.
How about Takol, it’s from ancient language of native people of Jakarta, Indonesia, which mean “a condition where a person was tend to beat other person but he actually didn’t”, but in some cases, it also mean “being abused by someone else”.
Reply to Erik Johnels:
the english word for “lagom” is “just”
Um. No. How would you translate “the land of lagom”? or insult your boyfriend by saying he is “lagom.”
A good way to make a fluent fool of yourself is to know a language without the culture.
That is a truly wonderful word. I shall take it to heart.And try to develop stage 4 forgiveness. Clarissa Pinkola Este in her book “Women Who Run with the Wolves” has to date, written the most insightful work on forgiveness that I have ever read. Trust the Congo to deliver something equally complex, if dark hearted a la Joseph Conrad. Apocalypse tomorrow in the Galaxy that time forgot.
Regards
Kate McNamara
Great list. There are so many words in each language that are hard to translate. Sometimes though certain things are easier to express in one language. That’s why I usually speak Franglais with other Franglaphones (English / French).
Rui Peres: No, “just” isn’t really accurate. Just indicates the effort was sufficient, but “sufficient” doesn’t encompass the kind of meaning, as well as cultural grounding, that “lagom” does.
As for Swedes being socialistic, well we may have some collective thinking going on coupled with some kickass welfare but we’re damn competitive too. 🙂
A Shlimiel is someone in the restaurant who spills the soup.
A Shlamazal is the person which the soup is spilled onto.
Hahahaha, Jon.
chornically unlucky? like a jynx
I think the Dutch word ‘gedogen’ (a verb) is even harder to translate. ‘gedogen’ means to explicitly prohibit something but in practice never punish the offenders.
I don’t think “na” is tough at all as far as translations of Japanese goes. What about “muri” (meaning “can’t do it” but also “doubtful” and and about a hundred other things depending on context); aesthetic terms, like “mu” (Buddhist use of “emptiness”) or “wabi” (something like dignified in terms of taste), “sabi” (homey); and all the onomatopoeia that has no parallel in English (at least)… dunno.
@ Werner: yea that one is always fun to explain to tourists who smoke weed.
gezellig doesn’t mean cosy by the way, that’s only half its meaning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezellig
But I guess that almost goes for all words that only had a one word translation on that list.
wew who cares on those words there i will use it if it published in the dictionary
i translated some of them into arabic:
“sababa” الصبابة for portuguese word
“Ilunga” is “الكاظم” alkazem
“naa” is أود aodo
Pochemuchka is سئيل sa’il and it is from Exaggeration formula
Interesting: no similarities between Klloshar and Clochard (French) ? I am sure there are, since lots of Albanians emmigrated to other countries and somehow the words crossfertilised both languages ! Just a humble opinion ;-))
Strange to find the word “schlemiel” in our dutch dictionary. It means literally the same!
Also, “gedogen” is pretty easy to translate: it means “to tolerate”.
It’s not because it’s used in some backward way to describe the tolerating of drug use in The Netherlands that it gets a special meaning.
My guess is that the words describing a pretty ‘specific yet broad feeling’ (like “gezellig” or “saudade”) are the hardest words to translate.