From the BBC. I particularly like the last paragraph.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3830521.stm

The "winning" example reminded me very forcefully of "hrung".

OK, Max. Spill. What's with hrung?

Since you asked:
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Ford Prefect's original name is only pronuncible in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out all the old Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford's father was the only man on the entire planet to survive the Great Collapsing Hrung disaster, by an extraordinary coincidence that he was never able satisfactorily to explain. The whole episode is shrouded in deep mystery: in fact no one ever knew what a Hrung was nor why it had chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven particularly. Ford's father, magnanimously waving aside the clouds of suspicion that had inevitably settled around him, came to live on Betelgeuse Five where he both fathered and uncled Ford; in memory of his now dead race he christened him in the ancient Praxibetel tongue.

Because Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy. The other kids at school nicknamed him Ix, which in the language of Betelgeuse Five translates as "boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven".
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RIP DNA.

And water is wet.

Here's the link to the original survey; it also includes the "ten" most untranslatable English words (yet there seem to be only nine):

1 plenipotentiary
2 gobbledegook
3 serendipity
4 poppycock
5 googly
6 Spam
7 whimsy
8 bumf
9 chuffed

http://www.todaytranslations.com/index.php/fuseaction/home.content/page/press

Maybe they're counting shlimazl.

I'll offer this for an American translation of 'googly':

change-up.

>And water is wet.

naa.

So, untranslatable means that there is no one-to-one correspondence between word a in language X with word b in language Y? That seems a given. All words are equally untranslatable. OTOH, all the words quoted were translated rather well in the article, but using more than one word for the translation. These thousand linguists need to get out more. Though, maybe thousand was used in the National Socialist sense of the word, i.e., a dozen.

Well, I was wondering, if gezellig is glossed as the Dutch for cosy, how is it untranslatable unless it doesn't mean cosy at all? If this article was being written in Dutch, would cosy make the list and be glossed as gezellig?


Bingley

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001104.html

So, untranslatable means that there is no one-to-one correspondence between word a in language X with word b in language Y?

I think there is more to it than that. I think the article makes the point that Although the definitions seem fairly precise, the problem is trying to convey the local references associated with such words, says Jurga Zilinskiene, head of Today Translations, which carried out the survey

I can't think of any examples, but I know there are words in English that people who use it as a second language can use, but don't seem to really get all the nuances that a native speaker can understand.

Jurga Zilinskiene

Which book in the H2G2 trilogy of five was she mentioned in?

Although the definitions seem fairly precise, the problem is trying to convey the local references associated with such words

I'd argue that this is true of any word in another language, and quite a few of the ones in ours. So much personal and societal baggage (connotations) invested in those tiny little bits of air. I remember a Steve Martin joke about how the French are really strange, they have a different word for everything. (Later recycled by Quentin T. in Pulp Fiction as a discussion by murderers of foreign hamburgers.)

Hi Jim,
this is true of any word in another language, and quite a few of the ones in ours. My reaction was rather similar to yours - but it's really a matter of degree. If I want to use, in a German text, the notion corresponding to gobbledegook, and need a full paragraph to render it, the effect is all but gone. Btw I suspect German has no word for gobbledegook because this would cover too much of it..

trying to convey the local references associated with such words

Which brings us back to the unanswered (and only implicitly asked) question: Is change up a decent American translation of googly. Certainly it isn't a good translation in the literal sense, but in the metaphorical sense it preserves the sports metaphor and it preserves the idea of something unexpected. I would suggest that there is really no need for a literal translation of googly.

If I want to use, in a German text, the notion corresponding to gobbledegook, and need a full paragraph to render it, the effect is all but gone.

How about Kauderwelsch? But yes, I agree with you.

6 Spam

I can't imagine they'd include the capitalized version as that which is "traslationally challenged" (otherwise I'm sure we could come up with more/difficult examples), and the newest use of 'spam' as an email category is equivalent to "junk" or "garbage"... which can't be that *hard, can it?

Kauderwelsch does not cover the "posturing" aspect of gobbledegook - it is incomprehensible by default rather than intentionally.

I was unaware that gobbledegook had to be intentionally incomprehensible.

FWIW, here's what Plain English has to say in their latest missive:


"...And ironically for us gobbledygook came second in the list. We were quite surprised to see this, as we have seen equivalents in at least four languages, including French (charabia), German (kauderwelsh), Dutch (onzin) and Italian (gergo incomprensible).

We'd love to hear any translations of the word into other languages."

~~~~
n.b. The German is misspelled.

it is incomprehensible by default rather than intentionally.

I'm not sure of the intentionality of incomprehensibility of gobbledygook either, but its coining is credited to Maury Maverick, US Congressman from Texas, in 1944. He wrote a memo banning "gobbledygook language" and mock-threateaning, "anyone using the words activation or implementation will be shot."

Most people who do not speak a jargon, argot, cant, slang, or dialect usually insist that people who do, do so to confuse their audience and hide the topic of conversation behindsome kind of babble. Sometimes they're right, but sometimes not.

The intentionally incomprehensible candidates are usually called cant in English. There are plenty of examples around: e.g., Cockney rhyming slang, in Germany and environs, Rotwelsch (Gaunersprache 'cant', a mixture of German, Yiddish, Romany, etc.), in France Loucherbem (similar to Pig Latin, used by butchers, from boucher) and Verlan (from l'envers), and in Buenos Aires Lunfardo.

For me the differece between gobbledygook and jargon or cantis that in the latter two the words use may hide the meaning from the uninitiated listener, intentionally or otherwise. Gobbledygook as I have understood it is used to hide the fact that there is no, or very little, meaning. For example the technobabble used on many sci-fi shows. Like they said or the politition "I hear him talking but I don't hear him saying anything."

used to hide the fact that there is no, or very little, meaning. - Thank you, this expresses exactly what I had in mind, only better. I made the experience when I had to translate a management speech (by my boss of the time) from German into French. I had to take care that anything was left of it..