| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Poll: Have you ever encountered a word in your mother tongue that you didn’t know how to translate? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Have you ever encountered a word in your mother tongue that you didn’t know how to translate? ".
View the poll results »
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I translate exclusively into my mother tongue...
| | | | IrinaN
United States
Local time: 09:10
English to Russian
+ ...
I don't translate words. I translate meaningful phrases, paragraphs and pages also known as context.
Are you asking about a case of an allegedly non-existent single-word equivalent in English that would ensure a 100% correct translation from Russian with every nuance accounted for in every context? Such predicament is a very common thing in any pair, it may indeed be non-existent yet it makes one of the most attractive and intriguing part of our profession. But would it mean "I don... See more I don't translate words. I translate meaningful phrases, paragraphs and pages also known as context.
Are you asking about a case of an allegedly non-existent single-word equivalent in English that would ensure a 100% correct translation from Russian with every nuance accounted for in every context? Such predicament is a very common thing in any pair, it may indeed be non-existent yet it makes one of the most attractive and intriguing part of our profession. But would it mean "I don't know how to translate it?" Research is another part of the same profession.
Translating and deciphering poll titles is getting harder and harder ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Pretty silly Q, if I may say so. | Jul 3 |
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My vocabulary in English, my mother tongue, is huge and includes lots of obscure and useless words, gleaned from years of doing cryptic crosswords, that I would never ever need to translate and wouldn't know how to if I did. Most of them would probably have no cultural referent in my second language.
On the other hand, as others have already mentioned, I translate professionally only the other way, from Greek to English, and it's rather unusual for me to come across a Greek word tha... See more My vocabulary in English, my mother tongue, is huge and includes lots of obscure and useless words, gleaned from years of doing cryptic crosswords, that I would never ever need to translate and wouldn't know how to if I did. Most of them would probably have no cultural referent in my second language.
On the other hand, as others have already mentioned, I translate professionally only the other way, from Greek to English, and it's rather unusual for me to come across a Greek word that presents problems in translation.
It does happen though. I remember reading a translation of a Greek novel in which a single word had been translated into a whole paragraph of explanation, because the story wouldn't make sense otherwise. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Alex Lichanow
Germany
Local time: 16:10
Member (2020)
English to German
+ ...
My mother tongue is full of words that are considered to be untranslatable. There's a reason "Schadenfreude" is simply used unchanged in English. However, I only translate INTO my mother tongue, so the question is irrelevant.
| | | | | Of course, privately | Jul 3 |
I only translate into my mother tongue, too, but it happens sometimes that my French husband asks me what a German expression means, and I realise that I can only explain around it and/or give him examples of its use in context.
| | | | | Not just words: there are big pieces of text that should be left alone | Jul 3 |
And if you care to translate one (which will be difficult), you should be prepared to read reviews saying how lame your translation is. Since the option of writing something that's better than the original is rarely available (unless the translator is a genius, and I don't claim to be one), it only makes sense to translate something if it makes sense to have it in translation for some solid purpose. I remember hearing a pretty famous Russian romantic song performed in English. It did sound good,... See more And if you care to translate one (which will be difficult), you should be prepared to read reviews saying how lame your translation is. Since the option of writing something that's better than the original is rarely available (unless the translator is a genius, and I don't claim to be one), it only makes sense to translate something if it makes sense to have it in translation for some solid purpose. I remember hearing a pretty famous Russian romantic song performed in English. It did sound good, and I imagine it was well loved in its time, but the lyrics were completely changed. Like, completely. Why? Well, I guess it's because it made no sense to translate the original lyrics and fit them into the same song format: it just wouldn't be relevant to the English-speaking crowd (that song being far from the hardest of them to translate).
Languages have many words that need explanations in other languages. I once found a Greek word on KudoZ with quite a few answers offered exclusively by Greeks, and I just happened to know that word (and its Russian counterpart) as well as the teaching behind it so I could see that none of the answers conveyed the essence of it. Why? Because it doesn't exist in English. Can't see how this can pose a problem though: English can always borrow a new Greek word or two. Are language purists even a thing in the Anglosphere?
[Редактировалось 2024-07-03 10:24 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 16:10
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
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Since I'm not capable to translate on a professional level into another language than my mother tongue (in my humble opinion 99% of all translators isn't capable to do that), I would probably encounter words in my mother tongue that I don't know how to translate all the time.
| | | | Zea_Mays 
Italy
Local time: 16:10
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
Examples for such words which can only be paraphrased:
Italian: ginepraio, menefreghismo
German: Torschlusspanik, Schadenfreude
An English word often hard to translate: experience
| | | | | Obviously everyone would | Jul 3 |
I frequently encounter words in my mother tongue that I don’t even know the meaning of, so I’m not going to know how to translate them.
| | | | Ruan Rocha
Brazil
Local time: 11:10
English to Portuguese
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| It happens, but there's a "but" | Jul 3 |
Well, yeah, it happens sometimes, but, as other people have discussed about that on their answers, like, there might be a word, whether from our mother tongue whether it's not, that we don't exactly know the meaning or the equivalent to the other language, but this quest is a little deeper than that. You have to understand what's the context, the whole idea behind that word. Sometimes You don't know exactly what's the translation of that word, but if You know what the speech is about, You don't ... See more Well, yeah, it happens sometimes, but, as other people have discussed about that on their answers, like, there might be a word, whether from our mother tongue whether it's not, that we don't exactly know the meaning or the equivalent to the other language, but this quest is a little deeper than that. You have to understand what's the context, the whole idea behind that word. Sometimes You don't know exactly what's the translation of that word, but if You know what the speech is about, You don't need to translate that word. But the phrase, the sentence, the mental frame of the meaning. Many times it is the most important of all, the way people think in that language. ▲ Collapse
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Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 17:10
Member
English to Turkish
I wasn't taught my mother's tongue (Kurdish) because of 'safety' considerations.
| | | | | Oh I can understand | Jul 3 |
Alex Lichanow wrote:
My mother tongue is full of words that are considered to be untranslatable. There's a reason "Schadenfreude" is simply used unchanged in English. However, I only translate INTO my mother tongue, so the question is irrelevant.
pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune?, Impossible to translate also in Italian and French
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 16:10
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| Possible in my language | Jul 3 |
Angie Garbarino wrote: Alex Lichanow wrote:
My mother tongue is full of words that are considered to be untranslatable. There's a reason "Schadenfreude" is simply used unchanged in English. However, I only translate INTO my mother tongue, so the question is irrelevant. pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune?, Impossible to translate also in Italian and French
We have a word for this in my language “zluradost”. It’s a form of (mild) passive/emotional sadism. Is this the most evil one can get? Or Machiavellianism?
I find that names of many local dishes stay the same in the target language. For instance, the Italian word “pizza”, look at this, just slight variations at times:
https://beelinguapp.com/blog/how-to-say-pizza-in-different-languages
It’s because local dishes are like brand names.
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