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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,027 |
What is being imported, besides the literal word, is an aura of pop culture of the American variety, that defies translation.
That's an interesting point, which hasn't been brought up before in this discussion. I wouldn't say it "defies" translation, though. It makes translation seem pointless. This applies to many IT terms, too. The French habe been fighting an uphill battle there for years.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
Quote:
I think I have a candidate.
In my experience, Japanese and Korean people cannot be made to understand the meaning of "kitsch" or "tacky". Japanese pop culture is overwhelmingly cutesy-cutesy. Even the offical promotional emblem of the Japan Self-Defense Forces is comprised of a couple of doe-eyed, infantile munchkins.
But then, this is only a case of English-Japanese untranslatability.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuteness_in_Japan
Kitsch is a German word so I don't think that counts as an untranslatable English word.
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Joined: Jun 2006
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
Quote:
Is there a word in English which is untranslatable?
The Welsh word hiraeth, the Portuguese word saudade, the Spanish word duende, the German word weltschmerz, Han in Chinese, and others, are considered untranslatable into another language. We can give an approximate translation. "Wistfulness"; "Nostalgia"; "Passion"; "Worldweariness"; "Bitterness".
Doesn't the English word 'spleen' cover the meaning of the above words? It's a word Baudelaire borrows as the title for one of his poems.
And I know at least one word I would not be really able to translate into my language: 'wayfarer'. I admit that it is a poetic word, but we have nothing that evoques the same sentiment.
Last edited by BranShea; 12/13/06 09:41 PM.
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addict
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OP
addict
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 631 |
Maybe the concepts of "cultural displacement" and "the cultural interspace" are unique to post-colonial, English-speaking cultures of fading European descent. Maybe not.
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Joined: May 2002
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veteran
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veteran
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 1,529 |
Quote:
Maybe the concepts of "cultural displacement" and "the cultural interspace" are unique to post-colonial, English-speaking cultures of fading European descent. Maybe not.
I dunno, Hydra, but I think that maybe the paragraph above is intranslatable in all of the so-called foreign languages.
It is to me in English. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
Posts: 5,295 |
What is the difference between foreign languages and so-called foreign languages!?
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
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The phrase "foreign language" assumes an anglo-centric bias that is anathema to everything Milo stands for.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
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The words a and the are untranslatable into languages like Latin, Sanskrit, Mandarin Chinese, or Russian.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
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Mandarin Chinese, or Russian These people don't say the equivalent of, for ex., "I'm going to the store to look for a good pair of shoes"?
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Joined: Jun 2006
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2006
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Quote:
The phrase "foreign language" assumes an anglo-centric bias that is anathema to everything Milo stands for.
Good. But what does the phrase "so-called foreign language" assume?
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