Untranslatability
Encyclopedia
Untranslatability is a property of a text, or of any utterance, in one language
, for which no equivalent text or utterance can be found in another language when translated.
Terms are, however, neither exclusively translatable nor exclusively untranslatable; rather, the degree of difficulty of translation
depends on their nature, as well as on the translator's knowledge of the languages in question.
Quite often, a text or utterance that is considered to be "untranslatable" is actually a lacuna, or lexical gap
. That is, there is no one-to-one equivalence between the word, expression or turn of phrase in the source language and another word, expression or turn of phrase in the target language. A translator can, however, resort to a number of translation procedures to compensate for this.
: The majority of examples and illustrations given below will involve translating to or from the English language
.
The translation procedures that are available in cases of lacunae, or lexical gaps, include the following:
For example, in the Belgian
comic book
The Adventures of Tintin
, Tintin's trusty canine sidekick Milou is translated as Snowy in English
, Bobbie in Dutch
, Kuttus in Bengali
, and Struppi in German
; likewise the detectives Dupont and Dupond become Thomson and Thompson in English, Jansen and Janssen in Dutch, Jonson and Ronson in Bengali
, Schultze and Schulze in German, Hernández and Fernández in Spanish
, and (Dùběn and Dùpéng) in Chinese
, Fomichoff and Fomichoff in Russian
and Skafti and Skapti in Icelandic
.
The French novel 99 Francs
was relocalized when translated. The English version took place in London
, instead of Paris
.
Adaptation is often used when translating poetry
, works of theatre
, and advertising
.
In English text, borrowings not sufficiently anglicised are normally in italics.
entails taking an expression, breaking it down to individual elements and translating each element into the target language word for word. For example, the German word "Alleinvertretungsanspruch" can be calqued to "single-representation-claim", but a proper translation would result in "Exclusive Mandate
". Word-by-word translations usually have comic value, but can be a means to save as much of the original style as possible, especially when the source text is ambiguous or undecipherable to the translator.
For example, many languages have two forms of the second person pronoun
, namely a informal\singular form and a formal\plural form. This is known as T-V distinction
, found in French (tu vs. vous), Spanish (tú / vos vs. usted), Russian ( vs. ), Dutch (jij vs. u), Bengali (aapni vs. tumi vs. tui), German (du / Ihr vs. Sie) and Italian (tu vs. voi/lei), for example, but not contemporary English. Hence, to translate a text from one of these languages to English, the translator may have to compensate by using a first name or nickname
, or by using syntactic
phrasing that are viewed as informal in English (I'm, you're, gonna, dontcha, etc.), or by using English words of the formal and informal register
s, to preserve the level of formality.
, is a translation procedure whereby the translator replaces a word in the source text by a group of words or an expression in the target text. For example, the Portuguese
word is often translated into English as "the feeling of missing a person who is gone". Yet another example, similar to the Portuguese "saudade", is "dor" in Romanian, translated into English as "missing someone or something that's gone and/or not available at the time".
An example of untranslatability is seen in the Dutch language through the word , which does not have an English equivalent, though the German equivalent Gemütlichkeit
is sometimes used. Literally, it means a cozy, friendly, or nice atmosphere, but can also connote time spent with loved ones, the fact of seeing a friend after a long absence, the friendliness or chattiness of a specific person, or a general sense of togetherness. Such gaps can lead to word borrowing, as with pajamas
or Zeitgeist
.
or an endnote
) added by the translator to the target text to provide additional information pertaining to the limits of the translation, the cultural background, or any other explanations.
Some translation exams allow or demand such notes. Some translators regard resorting to notes as a failure, although this view is not shared by most professionals.
has words that can be used as equivalent to English "I", "you", or "he/she/it", they are relatively formal terms (or markedly informal). In most cases, Thai people use words which express the relation between speaker and listener according to their respective roles. For instance, for a mother to say to her child "I'll tell you a story", she would say "แม่จะเล่านิทานให้ลูกฟัง" (mae ja lao nitaan hai luuk fang), or "Mother will tell child a story". Similarly, older and younger friends will often use sibling terminology, so that an older friend telling a younger friend "You're my friend" would be "น้องเป็นเพื่อนพี่" (nawng pen peuan pii), would translate directly as "Younger sibling is older sibling’s friend". To be translated into English correctly, it is proper to use "I" and "you" for these example statements, but normal Thai perceptions of relation are lost in the process.
, Bengali
, Finnish
, Hebrew
, Hindi, Irish
, Japanese
, Turkish
, Urdu, or Welsh
, some difficulty may be found. There is no specific verb with this meaning in these languages. Instead, for "I have X" these languages use a combination of words that mean X is to me; or (in Finnish) with me is X; (in Turkish) my X exists; or (in Hebrew) there(-is) (to-)me( or mine) X. In the case of Irish, this phrasing has passed over into Hiberno-English
.
In Hungarian
, there is a word corresponding to "have": bír — but its use is quite scarce today usually turning up in very formal and legal texts. It also sounds outdated, since it was used to translate the Latin habeo and the German haben possessive verbs when these languages had official status in Hungary. The general grammatical construction used is "there is a(n) X of mine". For example, the English sentence "I have got a car." translates to Hungarian as "Van egy autóm." which would translate back to English word by word as "There is a car of mine.".
A similar construction occurs in Russian, where "I have" translates literally into at (or by) me there is. Russian does have a word that means "to have": (imet') — but it is very rarely used by Russian speakers in the same way English speakers use the word have; in fact, in some cases, it may be misinterpreted as vulgar slang for the subject rudely using the object for sexual gratification; for example, in an inept translation of "Do you have a wife?"
In Japanese, the English word "to have" is most often translated into the verbs iru (いる or 居る) and aru (ある or 有る). The former verb is used to indicate the presence of a person, animal, or other living creature (excluding plant life) while the latter verb is closer to the English "to have" and is used for inanimate objects. To indicate the English "have" in the sense of possession, the Japanese language uses the verb motsu (持つ), which literally means "to carry."
There is no simple way in English to contrast Finnish (continuing, corresponding to English to write) and (a regular frequentative
, "to occasionally write short passages at a time", or "to jot down now and then"). Also, (to jump once) and (to continuously jump; to be jumping from point A to B) are another example.
Irish allows the prohibitive mood to be used in the passive voice
. The effect is used to prohibit something while expressing society's disapproval for that action at the same time. For example, contrast Ná caithigí tobac (meaning "Don't smoke" when said to multiple people), which uses the second person plural in the imperative meaning "Do not smoke", with Ná caitear tobac, which is best translated as "Smoking just isn't done here", uses the autonomous imperative meaning "One does not smoke".
As in Latin, Italian has two distinct declined past tenses, where and both mean I was, the former indicating a concluded action in the (remote) past, and the latter an action that holds some connection to the present. The "" is often used for narrative history (for example, novels).
The difference is nowadays also partly geographic. In the north of Italy (and standard Italian) the "" is rarely used in spoken language, whereas in the south it often takes the place of the "".
Likewise, English lacks a productive grammatical means to show indirection
but must instead rely on periphrasis
, that is the use of multiple words to explain an idea. Finnish grammar, on the contrary, allows the regular production of a series of verbal derivatives, each of which involves a greater degree of indirection. For example, on the basis of the verb vetää (to pull), it is possible to produce:
Most Turkic languages (Turkish, Azeri, Kazakh, etc.) contain the grammatical verb suffix "miş" (or "mis" in other dialects), which indicates that the speaker did not witness the act personally but surmises or has discovered that the act has occurred or was told of it by another. Examples: "Gitmiş!" (Turkish) which can be expressed in English as "it is reported that he/she has gone" or, most concisely, as "I guess he has gone". This grammatical form is also usually used when telling jokes and narrating stories. As well, nearly every Quechua
sentence is marked by an evidential clitic, indicating the source of the speaker's knowledge (and how certain s/he is about the statement). The enclitic =mi expresses personal knowledge (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirmi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver - I know it for a fact"); =si expresses hearsay knowledge (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirsi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, or so I've heard"); =chá expresses high probability (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirchá, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, most likely"). Colloquially, the latter is also used when the speaker has dreamed the event told in the sentence or experienced it under alcohol intoxication.
Languages that are extremely different from each other, like English and Chinese
, need their translations to be more like adaptations. Chinese has no tenses
per se, only three aspect
s. The English verb to be does not have a direct equivalent in Chinese. In an English sentence where to be leads to an adjective
("It is blue"), there is no to be in Chinese. (There are no adjectives in Chinese, instead there are stative verbs that don't need an extra verb.) If it states a location, the verb "zài" is used, as in "We are in the house". And in most other cases, the verb "shì" is used, as in "I am the leader." Any sentence that requires a play on those different meanings will not work in Chinese. In fact, very simple concepts in English can sometimes be difficult to translate, for example, there is no single direct translation for the word "yes" in Chinese, as in Chinese the affirmative is said by repeating the verb in the question. ("Do you have it?" "I have".)
and Dutch
have a wealth of modal particles
that are particularly difficult to translate as they convey sense or tone more rather than strictly grammatical information. The most infamous example perhaps is doch (Dutch: toch), which roughly means "Don't you realize that . . . ?" or "In fact it is so, though someone is denying it." What makes translating such words difficult is their different meanings depending on intonation or the context.
A common use of the word doch can be found in the German sentence Der Krieg war doch noch nicht verloren, which translates to The war wasn't lost yet, after all.
Several other grammatical constructs in English may be employed to translate these words for each of their occurrences. The same Der Krieg war doch noch nicht verloren with slightly changed pronunciation can also mean excuse in defense to a question: . . . but the war was not lost yet (. . . so we fought on).
A use which relies heavily on intonation and context could produce yet another meaning: "So the war was really not over yet (as you have been trying to convince me all along)."
Another change of intonation makes the sentence a question. Der Krieg war doch noch nicht verloren? would translate into "(You mean) the war was not yet lost (back then)?"
Another well-known example comes from the Portuguese or Spanish verbs and , both translatable as to be (see Romance copula
). However, is used only with essence or nature, while is used with states or conditions. Sometimes this information is not very relevant for the meaning of the whole sentence and the translator will ignore it, whereas at other times it can be retrieved from the context.
When none of these apply, the translator will usually use a paraphrase
or simply add words that can convey that meaning. The following example comes from Portuguese:
Some South Slavic words that have no English counterparts are doček, a gathering organized at someone's arrival (the closest translation would be greeting or welcome; however, a 'doček' does not necessarily have to be positive); and limar, a sheet metal worker.
Another instance is the Russian word /posh-lost'/. This noun roughly means a mixture of banality, commonality, and vulgarity. Vladimir Nabokov
mentions it as one of the hardest Russian words to translate precisely into English.
.
Many Bengali
(বাংলা) kinship words consider both gender and age. For example, Father's elder brothers are called Jethu (জ্যাঠা) while younger brothers are called Kaku (কাকু). Their wives are called Jethi-ma (জেঠি-মা) and Kaki-ma (কাকি-মা), respectively. Father's sister is called Pisi (পিসি), mother's sister is maasi (মাসি). Mother's brother is called Mama (মামা) and his wife, Maami (মামি). English would just use Uncle and Aunt. An elder brother is Dada (দাদা), elder sister is Didi (দিদি), while the younger brother is Bhai (ভাই) and younger sister, Bon (বোন).
Most Thai
words expressing kinship have no direct translations and require additional words. There are no Thai equivalents for most daily English kinship terms, as English terms leave out much information that is natural to Thai.
As an example, Thai does not distinguish between siblings by gender, but by age. Siblings older than yourself are พี่ (pii), and those younger are น้อง (nawng). Similar distinctions apply to aunts and uncles, based on whether they are older or younger than the sibling parent, and also whether they are maternal or paternal uncles. For instance, น้า (naa) means "mother's younger brother/sister" etc.
In Arabic, "brother" is often translated into أخ (Akh). However, whilst this word may describe a brother who shares either one or both parents, there is a separate word - شقيق (Shaqeeq) - to describe a brother with whom one shares both parents.
In Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Lao, Tagalog, Turkish, most north Indian languages, Tamil, Telugu and Hungarian there are separate words for "older brother" and "younger brother" and, likewise, "older sister" and "younger sister". The simple words "brother" and "sister" are rarely used to describe a person, and most commonly appear in the plural. (In Hungarian, however, the terms "fiútestvér" and "lánytestvér", meaning "male sibling" and "female sibling" respectively, exist but are not commonly used.)
How would you ask a boy who has several brothers "which" (or "which-th") son of his parents he is in English, such that his reply would be something like: "I am the third son"? ("Which in order of number?") This is a straightforward construct in some other languages, which have an exact word for "which-th", such as Finnish , Hungarian , Latin
, German , French , Dutch , Esperanto
kioma, Russian
, Korean
, Bengali {sejo} or Chinese 第几 (第幾) .
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have the terms farmor and farfar for paternal grandparents, and mormor and morfar for maternal grandparents. The English terms great-grandfather and great-grandmother also have different terms in Swedish, depending on lineage. This distinction between paternal and maternal grandparents is also used in Bengali, Chinese, and Thai.
Norwegian also has the terms sønnesønn, dattersønn, datterdatter and sønnedatter, meaning respectively "son of my son", "son of my daughter", "daughter of my daughter", and "daughter of my son". Similar words exist in Swedish, Danish and Icelandic. In both cases, there exist terms synonymous with the English grand-prefixed ones which are used when exact relation is not an issue.
In Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Persian, Turkish, and South Slavic languages
there are different words for the person indicated by "mother's brother", "father's brother" and "parent's sister's husband", all of which would be uncle in English. An exactly analogous situation exists for aunt. In Thai this concept is taken a step further in that there are different words for the person indicated by "mother's elder brother" and "mother's younger brother", as well as "father's elder brother" and "father's younger brother".
The Polish language
distinguishes "paternal uncle" ("stryj") and "maternal uncle" ("wuj").
Swedish (and Danish) has words tant for "auntie" or lady in general, moster for maternal aunt, and faster for paternal aunt, but the last two are contractions of mors syster and fars syster ("mother's sister" and "father's sister", respectively). The same construction is used for uncles (rendering morbror and farbror). In Danish, and occasionally in Swedish, the word onkel corresponds to the Danish word tante.
The distinction between maternal and paternal uncles has caused several mistranslations; for example, in Walt Disney
's DuckTales
, Huey, Dewey, and Louie's Uncle Scrooge
was translated Roope-setä in Finnish (Paternal Uncle Robert) before it was known Scrooge was Donald's maternal uncle. The proper translation would have been Roope-eno (Maternal Uncle Robert).
Arabic contains separate words for "mother's brother" خال (Khāl) and "father's brother" عم (' Amm). The closest translation into English is "uncle", which gives no indication as to lineage, whether maternal or paternal. Similarly, in Arabic, there are specific words for the father's sister and the mother's sister, خالة (Khala(h)) and عمة(' Amma(h)), respectively (in both cases being the feminine forms of the masculine nouns, by addition of fatḥa-tāʾ marbūṭa). Bengali has separate words for such relations, too.
Whereas English has different words for the child of one's sibling based on its gender (nephew for the son of one's sibling, niece for the daughter), the word cousin applies to both genders of children belonging to one's aunt or uncle. Many languages approach these concepts very differently.
The Polish language
distinguishes a male cousin who is the son of an uncle ("brat stryjeczny") and a male cousin who is the son of an aunt ("brat cioteczny"); and a female cousin who is the daughter of an uncle ("siostra stryjeczna") and a female cousin who is the daughter of an aunt ("siostra cioteczna"). Polish distinguishes four kinds of nephew and niece: the son of a brother ("bratanek"), the daughter of a brother ("bratanica"), the son of a sister ("siostrzeniec"), and the daughter of a sister ("siostrzenica").
Though Italian
distinguishes between male and female cousins where English does not, it uses (nephew/niece) for both genders, though a masculine/feminine article preceding this can make the distinction. Moreover, this word can also mean grandchild, adding to its ambiguity.
Spanish and Portuguese distinguish in both cases: the son of a sibling is sobrino/sobrinho, whereas a daughter is sobrina/sobrinha, equally a male cousin is primo, while a female cousin is prima. However, when used in the plural, and both genders are involved, only the masculine form is used. If a speaker says that he went out with his cousins (primos) last night, it could refer to a group of all men, or of men and women. All women would use the female form.
Norwegian and Danish also distinguish both cases: the son of a sibling is nevø, whereas a daughter is niece, equally a male cousin is fætter, while a female cousin is kusine. Collectively the term søskendebarn is used for both. Swedish does not make these distinctions, although it keeps the term syskonbarn - and adds brorsbarn or systerbarn depending on the gender of the sibling whose children it is.
Dutch, on the other hand, distinguishes gender: (male) and (female), but it does not have different terms for nephew and cousin, except the unusual oomzegger and oomzegster. That is, both a son of a sibling and a son of an uncle are generally called .
Persian, Hebrew and Arabic contain no word for "cousin" at all; one must say "uncle's son" or an equivalent.
There is no standard English word for the Yiddish "makhatunim" or the Spanish "consuegros": a gender-neutral collective plural like "co-in-laws". If Harry marries Sally, then in Yiddish, Harry's father is the "mekhutn" of Sally's father; each mother is the "makheteyneste" of the other. In Bengali, both fathers are Beayi and mothers, Beyan.
Spanish contrasts "brother" with "brother-in-law" ("hermano", "cuñado"); "son" with "son-in-law" ("hijo", "yerno"), and similarly for female relatives like "sister-in-law" ("cuñada"); "daughter-in-law" ("nuera"). Bengali has Dada/Bhai for brother and Jamai-Babu/Bhagni-Pati for brother-in-law; Chhele for son and Jamai for son-in-law.
Serbian and Bosnian have specific terms for relations by marriage. For example, a "sister-in-law" can be a "snaha/snaja" (brother's wife, though also family-member's wife in general), "zaova" (husband's sister), "svastika" (wife's sister) or "jetrva" (husband's brother's wife). A "brother-in-law" can be a "zet" (sister's husband, or family-member's husband in general), "djever/dever" (husband's brother), "šurak/šurjak" (wife's brother) or "badžanak/pašenog" (wife's sister's husband). Bengali has a number of in-law words. For example, Boudi (elder brother's wife), Shaali (wife's sister), Shaala (wife's younger brother), Sambandhi (wife's elder brother/Shaali's husband), Bhaasur (husband's elder brother), Deor (husband's younger brother) Nanad (husband's sister), Jaa (husband's brother's wife), etc.
In Spanish, Concuño or Concuñado (varying by dialect) is the relationship between two men that marry sisters (or two women that marry brothers). In the English language this relationship would be lumped in with "Cuñado" (sibling's husband or spouses brother) as simply "brother-in-law".
In Russian, fifteen different words cover relations by marriage, enough to confuse many native speakers. There are for example, as in Yiddish, words like "" and "" for "co-in-laws". To further complicate the translator's job, Russian in-laws may choose to address each other familiarly by these titles.
In contrast to all of the above fine distinctions, in American English the term "my brother-in-law" covers "my spouse's brother", "my sister's husband", and "my spouse's sister's husband". In British English, the last of these is not considered strictly correct.
is a plant
(Wasabia japonica) used as a spicy Japan
ese condiment
. Traditionally, this plant only grows in Japan. It would be unlikely that someone from Angola (for example) would have a clear understanding of it. However, the easiest way to translate this word is to borrow it. Or one can use a similar vegetable's name to describe it. In English this word is translated as wasabi
or Japanese horseradish
. In Chinese, people can still call it wasabi by its Japanese sound, or pronounce it by its Kanji
characters, (pinyin
: shān kuí). However, wasabi is currently called 芥末 (jiè mò) or 绿芥 (lǜ jiè) in China and by the phonetic 味沙吡 (weishabi) in Taiwan. Horseradish is not usually seen in Eastern Asia; people may parallel it with mustard
. Hence, in some places, yellow mustard refers to imported mustard sauce; green mustard refers to wasabi.
Another method is using description instead of a single word. For example, languages like Russian and Ukrainian have borrowed words Kuraga and Uruk from Turkic languages. While both fruits are now known to the Western world, there are still no terms for them in English. English speakers have to use "dried apricot
without core" and "dried apricot with core" instead.
One particular type of foreign object that poses difficulties is the proper noun. As an illustration, consider another example from Douglas Hofstadter
, which he published in one of his "Metamagical Themas
" columns in Scientific American
. He pondered the question, Who is the first lady of Britain? Well, first ladies reside at the Prime Minister's address, and at the time, the woman living at 10 Downing Street was Margaret Thatcher
. But a different attribute that first ladies have is that they are married to heads of government, so perhaps a better answer was Denis Thatcher
, but he probably would not have relished the title.
and pun
s; poetry is difficult to translate because of its reliance on the sounds (for example, rhyme
s) and rhythms of the source language; puns, and other similar semantic
wordplay, because of how tightly they are tied to the original language. The oldest - best-known - examples, are probably those appearing in Bible translations, e.g. the verse in Genesis (2, 7), which explains why God gave Adam
this name: "God created Adam out of soil from the ground"; the original Hebrew text reveals the secret, since the word Adam connotes the word ground (being Adama in Hebrew), whereas translating the verse into other languages loses the original pun.
Similarly, consider the Italian adage "traduttore, traditore": a literal translation is "translator, traitor". The pun is lost, though the meaning persists. (A similar solution can be given, however, in Hungarian, by saying a fordítás: ferdítés, which roughly translates as "translation is distortion".)
That being said, many of the translation procedures discussed here can be used in these cases. For example, the translator can compensate for an "untranslatable" pun in one part of a text by adding a new pun in another part of the translated text.
Oscar Wilde
's play The Importance of Being Earnest
incorporates in its title a pun (resonating in the last line of the play) that conflates the name Ernest with the adjective of quality earnest. The French title of the translated play is "L'importance d'être Constant", replicating and transposing the pun; however, the character Ernest had to be renamed, and the allusion to trickery was lost. (Other French translations include "De l'importance d'être Fidèle" (faithful) and "Il est important d'être Aimé" (loved), with the same idea of a pun on first name / quality adjective.) A recent Hungarian translation of the same play by Ádám Nádasdy
applied a similar solution, giving the subtitle "Szilárdnak kell lenni" (lit. "One must be Szilárd") beside the traditional title "Bunbury", where "Szilárd" is a male name as well as an adjective meaning "solid, firm", or "steady", being itself a translation of the Greek name Constantine.
The Asterix
comic strip is renowned for its French puns; its translators have found many ingenious English substitutes.
Other forms of wordplay, such as spoonerism
s and palindrome
s are equally difficult, and often force hard choices on the translator. For example, take the classic palindrome: "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama". A translator might choose to translate it literally into, say, French — "Un homme, un projet, un canal: Panama", if it were used as a caption for a photo of Theodore Roosevelt
(the chief instigator of the Canal), and sacrifice the palindrome. But if the text is meant to give an example of a palindrome, he might elect to sacrifice the literal sense and substitute a French palindrome, such as "Un roc lamina l'animal cornu" ('A boulder swept away the horned animal').
Douglas Hofstadter
discusses the problem of translating a palindrome into Chinese, where such wordplay is theoretically impossible, in his book — which is devoted to the issues and problems of translation, with particular emphasis on the translation of poetry. Another example given by Douglas Hofstadter is the translation of the jabberwocky
poem by Lewis Carroll
, with its wealth of neologisms and portmanteau words, into a number of foreign tongues.
A notable Irish joke is that it is not possible to translate mañana into Gaelic as the Irish "don't have a word that conveys that degree of urgency".
, the method of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures by interchanging words whose letters have the same numerical value when added. A simple example of gematric
power might be the famous proverb נכנס יין יצא סוד nikhnas yayin yåSå sōd, lit. "entered wine went out secret", i.e. "wine brings out the truth", in vino veritas. The gematric value of יין "wine" is 70 (י=10; י=10; ן=50) and this is also the gematric value of סוד "secret" (ס=60; ו=6; ד=4). Thus, this sentence, according to many Jews at the time, had to be true."
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
, for which no equivalent text or utterance can be found in another language when translated.
Terms are, however, neither exclusively translatable nor exclusively untranslatable; rather, the degree of difficulty of translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
depends on their nature, as well as on the translator's knowledge of the languages in question.
Quite often, a text or utterance that is considered to be "untranslatable" is actually a lacuna, or lexical gap
Lexical gap
A lexical gap or lacuna is an absence of a word in a particular language. Types of lexical gaps include untranslatability and missing inflections.-Untranslatability:...
. That is, there is no one-to-one equivalence between the word, expression or turn of phrase in the source language and another word, expression or turn of phrase in the target language. A translator can, however, resort to a number of translation procedures to compensate for this.
Translation procedures
N.B.Nota Bene
Nota bene is an Italian and Latin phrase meaning "note well". The phrase first appeared in writing circa 1721.Often abbreviated as "N. B.", nota bene comes from the Latin roots notāre and bene . It is in the singular imperative mood, instructing one individual to note well the matter at hand...
: The majority of examples and illustrations given below will involve translating to or from the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
.
The translation procedures that are available in cases of lacunae, or lexical gaps, include the following:
Adaptation
An adaptation, also known as a free translation, is a procedure whereby the translator replaces a term with cultural connotations, where those connotations are restricted to readers of the original language text, with a term with corresponding cultural connotations that would be familiar to readers of the translated text.For example, in the Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of classic comic books created by Belgian artist , who wrote under the pen name of Hergé...
, Tintin's trusty canine sidekick Milou is translated as Snowy in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Bobbie in Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, Kuttus in Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
, and Struppi in German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
; likewise the detectives Dupont and Dupond become Thomson and Thompson in English, Jansen and Janssen in Dutch, Jonson and Ronson in Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
, Schultze and Schulze in German, Hernández and Fernández in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and (Dùběn and Dùpéng) in Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, Fomichoff and Fomichoff in Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Skafti and Skapti in Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
.
The French novel 99 Francs
99 Francs
99 Francs is a 2007 film by the French director Jan Kounen based on a novel with the same title written by Frédéric Beigbeder.-Plot:The film is a satire on the modern advertisement business...
was relocalized when translated. The English version took place in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, instead of Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
Adaptation is often used when translating poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, works of theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, and advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
.
Borrowing
Borrowing is a translation procedure whereby the translator uses a word or expression from the source text in the target text unmodified.In English text, borrowings not sufficiently anglicised are normally in italics.
Calque
CalqueCalque
In linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
entails taking an expression, breaking it down to individual elements and translating each element into the target language word for word. For example, the German word "Alleinvertretungsanspruch" can be calqued to "single-representation-claim", but a proper translation would result in "Exclusive Mandate
Exclusive Mandate
An exclusive mandate is a government's assertion of its legitimate authority over a certain territory, part of which another government controls with stable, de facto sovereignty...
". Word-by-word translations usually have comic value, but can be a means to save as much of the original style as possible, especially when the source text is ambiguous or undecipherable to the translator.
Compensation
Compensation is a translation procedure whereby the translator solves the problem of aspects of the source text that cannot take the same form in the target language by replacing these aspects with other elements or forms in the source text.For example, many languages have two forms of the second person pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...
, namely a informal\singular form and a formal\plural form. This is known as T-V distinction
T-V distinction
In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
, found in French (tu vs. vous), Spanish (tú / vos vs. usted), Russian ( vs. ), Dutch (jij vs. u), Bengali (aapni vs. tumi vs. tui), German (du / Ihr vs. Sie) and Italian (tu vs. voi/lei), for example, but not contemporary English. Hence, to translate a text from one of these languages to English, the translator may have to compensate by using a first name or nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
, or by using syntactic
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
phrasing that are viewed as informal in English (I'm, you're, gonna, dontcha, etc.), or by using English words of the formal and informal register
Register (linguistics)
In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, when speaking in a formal setting an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal...
s, to preserve the level of formality.
Paraphrase
Paraphrase, sometimes called periphrasisPeriphrasis
In linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or grammatical relationship is expressed by a free morpheme , instead of being shown by inflection or derivation...
, is a translation procedure whereby the translator replaces a word in the source text by a group of words or an expression in the target text. For example, the Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
word is often translated into English as "the feeling of missing a person who is gone". Yet another example, similar to the Portuguese "saudade", is "dor" in Romanian, translated into English as "missing someone or something that's gone and/or not available at the time".
An example of untranslatability is seen in the Dutch language through the word , which does not have an English equivalent, though the German equivalent Gemütlichkeit
Gemütlichkeit
Gemütlichkeit is a German abstract noun that has been adopted into English. Its closest equivalent is the word "coziness"; however, rather than merely describing a place that is compact, well-heated and nicely furnished , Gemütlichkeit connotes the notion of belonging, social acceptance,...
is sometimes used. Literally, it means a cozy, friendly, or nice atmosphere, but can also connote time spent with loved ones, the fact of seeing a friend after a long absence, the friendliness or chattiness of a specific person, or a general sense of togetherness. Such gaps can lead to word borrowing, as with pajamas
Pajamas
Pajamas, also spelled pyjamas , can refer to several related types of clothing. The original paijama are loose, lightweight trousers fitted with drawstring waistbands and worn in South and West Asia by both sexes...
or Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
.
Translator's note
A translator's note is a note (usually a footnoteFootnote
A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text, or both...
or an endnote
EndNote
EndNote is a commercial reference management software package, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. It is produced by Thomson Reuters.- Features :...
) added by the translator to the target text to provide additional information pertaining to the limits of the translation, the cultural background, or any other explanations.
Some translation exams allow or demand such notes. Some translators regard resorting to notes as a failure, although this view is not shared by most professionals.
Register
Although ThaiThai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
has words that can be used as equivalent to English "I", "you", or "he/she/it", they are relatively formal terms (or markedly informal). In most cases, Thai people use words which express the relation between speaker and listener according to their respective roles. For instance, for a mother to say to her child "I'll tell you a story", she would say "แม่จะเล่านิทานให้ลูกฟัง" (mae ja lao nitaan hai luuk fang), or "Mother will tell child a story". Similarly, older and younger friends will often use sibling terminology, so that an older friend telling a younger friend "You're my friend" would be "น้องเป็นเพื่อนพี่" (nawng pen peuan pii), would translate directly as "Younger sibling is older sibling’s friend". To be translated into English correctly, it is proper to use "I" and "you" for these example statements, but normal Thai perceptions of relation are lost in the process.
Possession
In the case of translating the English word have to ArabicArabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Hindi, Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, Urdu, or Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, some difficulty may be found. There is no specific verb with this meaning in these languages. Instead, for "I have X" these languages use a combination of words that mean X is to me; or (in Finnish) with me is X; (in Turkish) my X exists; or (in Hebrew) there(-is) (to-)me( or mine) X. In the case of Irish, this phrasing has passed over into Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English is the dialect of English written and spoken in Ireland .English was first brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion of the late 12th century. Initially it was mainly spoken in an area known as the Pale around Dublin, with Irish spoken throughout the rest of the country...
.
In Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, there is a word corresponding to "have": bír — but its use is quite scarce today usually turning up in very formal and legal texts. It also sounds outdated, since it was used to translate the Latin habeo and the German haben possessive verbs when these languages had official status in Hungary. The general grammatical construction used is "there is a(n) X of mine". For example, the English sentence "I have got a car." translates to Hungarian as "Van egy autóm." which would translate back to English word by word as "There is a car of mine.".
A similar construction occurs in Russian, where "I have" translates literally into at (or by) me there is. Russian does have a word that means "to have": (imet') — but it is very rarely used by Russian speakers in the same way English speakers use the word have; in fact, in some cases, it may be misinterpreted as vulgar slang for the subject rudely using the object for sexual gratification; for example, in an inept translation of "Do you have a wife?"
In Japanese, the English word "to have" is most often translated into the verbs iru (いる or 居る) and aru (ある or 有る). The former verb is used to indicate the presence of a person, animal, or other living creature (excluding plant life) while the latter verb is closer to the English "to have" and is used for inanimate objects. To indicate the English "have" in the sense of possession, the Japanese language uses the verb motsu (持つ), which literally means "to carry."
Verb forms
English is lacking some grammatical categories.There is no simple way in English to contrast Finnish (continuing, corresponding to English to write) and (a regular frequentative
Frequentative
In grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action. The frequentative form can be considered a separate, but not completely independent word, called a frequentative...
, "to occasionally write short passages at a time", or "to jot down now and then"). Also, (to jump once) and (to continuously jump; to be jumping from point A to B) are another example.
Irish allows the prohibitive mood to be used in the passive voice
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
. The effect is used to prohibit something while expressing society's disapproval for that action at the same time. For example, contrast Ná caithigí tobac (meaning "Don't smoke" when said to multiple people), which uses the second person plural in the imperative meaning "Do not smoke", with Ná caitear tobac, which is best translated as "Smoking just isn't done here", uses the autonomous imperative meaning "One does not smoke".
As in Latin, Italian has two distinct declined past tenses, where and both mean I was, the former indicating a concluded action in the (remote) past, and the latter an action that holds some connection to the present. The "" is often used for narrative history (for example, novels).
The difference is nowadays also partly geographic. In the north of Italy (and standard Italian) the "" is rarely used in spoken language, whereas in the south it often takes the place of the "".
Likewise, English lacks a productive grammatical means to show indirection
Indirection
In computer programming, indirection is the ability to reference something using a name, reference, or container instead of the value itself. The most common form of indirection is the act of manipulating a value through its memory address. For example, accessing a variable through the use of a...
but must instead rely on periphrasis
Periphrasis
In linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or grammatical relationship is expressed by a free morpheme , instead of being shown by inflection or derivation...
, that is the use of multiple words to explain an idea. Finnish grammar, on the contrary, allows the regular production of a series of verbal derivatives, each of which involves a greater degree of indirection. For example, on the basis of the verb vetää (to pull), it is possible to produce:
- vetää (pull),
- vedättää (cause something/someone to pull/to wind-up (lie)),
- vedätyttää (cause something/someone to cause something/someone to pull),
- vedätätyttää (cause something/someone to cause something/someone to cause something/someone to pull).
| Finnish | English | Translation/Paraphrase of boldface verb |
| Hevonen vetää. | A horse pulls. | pulls |
| Ajomies vedättää. | A driver commands the horse to pull. | causes something to pull |
| Urakoitsija vedätyttää. | A subcontractor directs the driver to command the horse to pull. | causes someone to cause something to pull |
| Yhtiö vedätätyttää. | The corporation assigns the subcontractor to have the driver command the horse to pull. | causes someone to cause someone to cause something to pull |
Most Turkic languages (Turkish, Azeri, Kazakh, etc.) contain the grammatical verb suffix "miş" (or "mis" in other dialects), which indicates that the speaker did not witness the act personally but surmises or has discovered that the act has occurred or was told of it by another. Examples: "Gitmiş!" (Turkish) which can be expressed in English as "it is reported that he/she has gone" or, most concisely, as "I guess he has gone". This grammatical form is also usually used when telling jokes and narrating stories. As well, nearly every Quechua
Quechua languages
Quechua is a Native South American language family and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes of South America, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably...
sentence is marked by an evidential clitic, indicating the source of the speaker's knowledge (and how certain s/he is about the statement). The enclitic =mi expresses personal knowledge (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirmi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver - I know it for a fact"); =si expresses hearsay knowledge (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirsi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, or so I've heard"); =chá expresses high probability (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirchá, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, most likely"). Colloquially, the latter is also used when the speaker has dreamed the event told in the sentence or experienced it under alcohol intoxication.
Languages that are extremely different from each other, like English and Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, need their translations to be more like adaptations. Chinese has no tenses
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
per se, only three aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
s. The English verb to be does not have a direct equivalent in Chinese. In an English sentence where to be leads to an adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
("It is blue"), there is no to be in Chinese. (There are no adjectives in Chinese, instead there are stative verbs that don't need an extra verb.) If it states a location, the verb "zài" is used, as in "We are in the house". And in most other cases, the verb "shì" is used, as in "I am the leader." Any sentence that requires a play on those different meanings will not work in Chinese. In fact, very simple concepts in English can sometimes be difficult to translate, for example, there is no single direct translation for the word "yes" in Chinese, as in Chinese the affirmative is said by repeating the verb in the question. ("Do you have it?" "I have".)
Vocabulary
GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
have a wealth of modal particles
German modal particle
In the German language, a modal particle is an uninflected word used mainly in spontaneous spoken language in colloquial registers. These words have a dual function: reflecting the mood or attitude of the speaker or narrator, and highlighting the sentence focus.The effect that a flavoring...
that are particularly difficult to translate as they convey sense or tone more rather than strictly grammatical information. The most infamous example perhaps is doch (Dutch: toch), which roughly means "Don't you realize that . . . ?" or "In fact it is so, though someone is denying it." What makes translating such words difficult is their different meanings depending on intonation or the context.
A common use of the word doch can be found in the German sentence Der Krieg war doch noch nicht verloren, which translates to The war wasn't lost yet, after all.
Several other grammatical constructs in English may be employed to translate these words for each of their occurrences. The same Der Krieg war doch noch nicht verloren with slightly changed pronunciation can also mean excuse in defense to a question: . . . but the war was not lost yet (. . . so we fought on).
A use which relies heavily on intonation and context could produce yet another meaning: "So the war was really not over yet (as you have been trying to convince me all along)."
Another change of intonation makes the sentence a question. Der Krieg war doch noch nicht verloren? would translate into "(You mean) the war was not yet lost (back then)?"
Another well-known example comes from the Portuguese or Spanish verbs and , both translatable as to be (see Romance copula
Romance copula
The copula or copulae in all Romance languages largely derive from the Latin verbs "to be" ; "to stand" ; and "to sit"...
). However, is used only with essence or nature, while is used with states or conditions. Sometimes this information is not very relevant for the meaning of the whole sentence and the translator will ignore it, whereas at other times it can be retrieved from the context.
When none of these apply, the translator will usually use a paraphrase
Paraphrase
Paraphrase is restatement of a text or passages, using other words. The term "paraphrase" derives via the Latin "paraphrasis" from the Greek , meaning "additional manner of expression". The act of paraphrasing is also called "paraphrasis."...
or simply add words that can convey that meaning. The following example comes from Portuguese:
- ""
- Literal translation: "I am not (apparently) handsome; I am (essentially) handsome."
- Adding words: "I am not handsome today; I am always handsome."
- Paraphrase: "I don't look handsome; I am handsome."
Some South Slavic words that have no English counterparts are doček, a gathering organized at someone's arrival (the closest translation would be greeting or welcome; however, a 'doček' does not necessarily have to be positive); and limar, a sheet metal worker.
Another instance is the Russian word /posh-lost'/. This noun roughly means a mixture of banality, commonality, and vulgarity. Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
mentions it as one of the hardest Russian words to translate precisely into English.
Family
For various reasons, such as differences in linguistic features or culture, it is often difficult to translate terms for family membersKinship terminology
Kinship terminology refers to the various systems used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology - for example some languages...
.
Many Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
(বাংলা) kinship words consider both gender and age. For example, Father's elder brothers are called Jethu (জ্যাঠা) while younger brothers are called Kaku (কাকু). Their wives are called Jethi-ma (জেঠি-মা) and Kaki-ma (কাকি-মা), respectively. Father's sister is called Pisi (পিসি), mother's sister is maasi (মাসি). Mother's brother is called Mama (মামা) and his wife, Maami (মামি). English would just use Uncle and Aunt. An elder brother is Dada (দাদা), elder sister is Didi (দিদি), while the younger brother is Bhai (ভাই) and younger sister, Bon (বোন).
Most Thai
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
words expressing kinship have no direct translations and require additional words. There are no Thai equivalents for most daily English kinship terms, as English terms leave out much information that is natural to Thai.
As an example, Thai does not distinguish between siblings by gender, but by age. Siblings older than yourself are พี่ (pii), and those younger are น้อง (nawng). Similar distinctions apply to aunts and uncles, based on whether they are older or younger than the sibling parent, and also whether they are maternal or paternal uncles. For instance, น้า (naa) means "mother's younger brother/sister" etc.
Siblings
In Arabic, "brother" is often translated into أخ (Akh). However, whilst this word may describe a brother who shares either one or both parents, there is a separate word - شقيق (Shaqeeq) - to describe a brother with whom one shares both parents.
In Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Lao, Tagalog, Turkish, most north Indian languages, Tamil, Telugu and Hungarian there are separate words for "older brother" and "younger brother" and, likewise, "older sister" and "younger sister". The simple words "brother" and "sister" are rarely used to describe a person, and most commonly appear in the plural. (In Hungarian, however, the terms "fiútestvér" and "lánytestvér", meaning "male sibling" and "female sibling" respectively, exist but are not commonly used.)
How would you ask a boy who has several brothers "which" (or "which-th") son of his parents he is in English, such that his reply would be something like: "I am the third son"? ("Which in order of number?") This is a straightforward construct in some other languages, which have an exact word for "which-th", such as Finnish , Hungarian , Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, German , French , Dutch , Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
kioma, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, Bengali {sejo} or Chinese 第几 (第幾) .
Grandparents
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have the terms farmor and farfar for paternal grandparents, and mormor and morfar for maternal grandparents. The English terms great-grandfather and great-grandmother also have different terms in Swedish, depending on lineage. This distinction between paternal and maternal grandparents is also used in Bengali, Chinese, and Thai.
Norwegian also has the terms sønnesønn, dattersønn, datterdatter and sønnedatter, meaning respectively "son of my son", "son of my daughter", "daughter of my daughter", and "daughter of my son". Similar words exist in Swedish, Danish and Icelandic. In both cases, there exist terms synonymous with the English grand-prefixed ones which are used when exact relation is not an issue.
Aunts and uncles
In Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Persian, Turkish, and South Slavic languages
South Slavic languages
The South Slavic languages comprise one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers...
there are different words for the person indicated by "mother's brother", "father's brother" and "parent's sister's husband", all of which would be uncle in English. An exactly analogous situation exists for aunt. In Thai this concept is taken a step further in that there are different words for the person indicated by "mother's elder brother" and "mother's younger brother", as well as "father's elder brother" and "father's younger brother".
The Polish language
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
distinguishes "paternal uncle" ("stryj") and "maternal uncle" ("wuj").
Swedish (and Danish) has words tant for "auntie" or lady in general, moster for maternal aunt, and faster for paternal aunt, but the last two are contractions of mors syster and fars syster ("mother's sister" and "father's sister", respectively). The same construction is used for uncles (rendering morbror and farbror). In Danish, and occasionally in Swedish, the word onkel corresponds to the Danish word tante.
The distinction between maternal and paternal uncles has caused several mistranslations; for example, in Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's DuckTales
DuckTales
DuckTales is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. Based on Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge comic book series, it premiered on September 18, 1987 and ended on November 28, 1990 with a total of four seasons and 100 episodes...
, Huey, Dewey, and Louie's Uncle Scrooge
Scrooge McDuck
Scrooge McDuck is a cartoon character created in 1947 by Carl Barks and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Scrooge is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a red or blue frock coat, top hat, pince-nez glasses, and spats...
was translated Roope-setä in Finnish (Paternal Uncle Robert) before it was known Scrooge was Donald's maternal uncle. The proper translation would have been Roope-eno (Maternal Uncle Robert).
Arabic contains separate words for "mother's brother" خال (Khāl) and "father's brother" عم (
Nephews, nieces, and cousins
Whereas English has different words for the child of one's sibling based on its gender (nephew for the son of one's sibling, niece for the daughter), the word cousin applies to both genders of children belonging to one's aunt or uncle. Many languages approach these concepts very differently.
The Polish language
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
distinguishes a male cousin who is the son of an uncle ("brat stryjeczny") and a male cousin who is the son of an aunt ("brat cioteczny"); and a female cousin who is the daughter of an uncle ("siostra stryjeczna") and a female cousin who is the daughter of an aunt ("siostra cioteczna"). Polish distinguishes four kinds of nephew and niece: the son of a brother ("bratanek"), the daughter of a brother ("bratanica"), the son of a sister ("siostrzeniec"), and the daughter of a sister ("siostrzenica").
Though Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
distinguishes between male and female cousins where English does not, it uses (nephew/niece) for both genders, though a masculine/feminine article preceding this can make the distinction. Moreover, this word can also mean grandchild, adding to its ambiguity.
Spanish and Portuguese distinguish in both cases: the son of a sibling is sobrino/sobrinho, whereas a daughter is sobrina/sobrinha, equally a male cousin is primo, while a female cousin is prima. However, when used in the plural, and both genders are involved, only the masculine form is used. If a speaker says that he went out with his cousins (primos) last night, it could refer to a group of all men, or of men and women. All women would use the female form.
Norwegian and Danish also distinguish both cases: the son of a sibling is nevø, whereas a daughter is niece, equally a male cousin is fætter, while a female cousin is kusine. Collectively the term søskendebarn is used for both. Swedish does not make these distinctions, although it keeps the term syskonbarn - and adds brorsbarn or systerbarn depending on the gender of the sibling whose children it is.
Dutch, on the other hand, distinguishes gender: (male) and (female), but it does not have different terms for nephew and cousin, except the unusual oomzegger and oomzegster. That is, both a son of a sibling and a son of an uncle are generally called .
Persian, Hebrew and Arabic contain no word for "cousin" at all; one must say "uncle's son" or an equivalent.
Relations by marriage
There is no standard English word for the Yiddish "makhatunim" or the Spanish "consuegros": a gender-neutral collective plural like "co-in-laws". If Harry marries Sally, then in Yiddish, Harry's father is the "mekhutn" of Sally's father; each mother is the "makheteyneste" of the other. In Bengali, both fathers are Beayi and mothers, Beyan.
Spanish contrasts "brother" with "brother-in-law" ("hermano", "cuñado"); "son" with "son-in-law" ("hijo", "yerno"), and similarly for female relatives like "sister-in-law" ("cuñada"); "daughter-in-law" ("nuera"). Bengali has Dada/Bhai for brother and Jamai-Babu/Bhagni-Pati for brother-in-law; Chhele for son and Jamai for son-in-law.
Serbian and Bosnian have specific terms for relations by marriage. For example, a "sister-in-law" can be a "snaha/snaja" (brother's wife, though also family-member's wife in general), "zaova" (husband's sister), "svastika" (wife's sister) or "jetrva" (husband's brother's wife). A "brother-in-law" can be a "zet" (sister's husband, or family-member's husband in general), "djever/dever" (husband's brother), "šurak/šurjak" (wife's brother) or "badžanak/pašenog" (wife's sister's husband). Bengali has a number of in-law words. For example, Boudi (elder brother's wife), Shaali (wife's sister), Shaala (wife's younger brother), Sambandhi (wife's elder brother/Shaali's husband), Bhaasur (husband's elder brother), Deor (husband's younger brother) Nanad (husband's sister), Jaa (husband's brother's wife), etc.
In Spanish, Concuño or Concuñado (varying by dialect) is the relationship between two men that marry sisters (or two women that marry brothers). In the English language this relationship would be lumped in with "Cuñado" (sibling's husband or spouses brother) as simply "brother-in-law".
In Russian, fifteen different words cover relations by marriage, enough to confuse many native speakers. There are for example, as in Yiddish, words like "" and "" for "co-in-laws". To further complicate the translator's job, Russian in-laws may choose to address each other familiarly by these titles.
In contrast to all of the above fine distinctions, in American English the term "my brother-in-law" covers "my spouse's brother", "my sister's husband", and "my spouse's sister's husband". In British English, the last of these is not considered strictly correct.
Foreign objects
Objects unknown to a culture can actually be easy to translate. For example, in Japanese, wasabiWasabi
, also known as Japanese horseradish, is a member of the Brassicaceae family, which includes cabbages, horseradish, and mustard. Its root is used as a condiment and has an extremely strong flavor. Its hotness is more akin to that of a hot mustard rather than the capsaicin in a chili pepper,...
is a plant
Plant
Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...
(Wasabia japonica) used as a spicy Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese condiment
Condiment
A condiment is an edible substance, such as sauce or seasoning, added to food to impart a particular flavor, enhance its flavor, or in some cultures, to complement the dish. Many condiments are available packaged in single-serving sachets , like mustard or ketchup, particularly when supplied with...
. Traditionally, this plant only grows in Japan. It would be unlikely that someone from Angola (for example) would have a clear understanding of it. However, the easiest way to translate this word is to borrow it. Or one can use a similar vegetable's name to describe it. In English this word is translated as wasabi
Wasabi
, also known as Japanese horseradish, is a member of the Brassicaceae family, which includes cabbages, horseradish, and mustard. Its root is used as a condiment and has an extremely strong flavor. Its hotness is more akin to that of a hot mustard rather than the capsaicin in a chili pepper,...
or Japanese horseradish
Horseradish
Horseradish is a perennial plant of the Brassicaceae family, which also includes mustard, wasabi, broccoli, and cabbages. The plant is probably native to south eastern Europe and the Arab World , but is popular around the world today...
. In Chinese, people can still call it wasabi by its Japanese sound, or pronounce it by its Kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
characters, (pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
: shān kuí). However, wasabi is currently called 芥末 (jiè mò) or 绿芥 (lǜ jiè) in China and by the phonetic 味沙吡 (weishabi) in Taiwan. Horseradish is not usually seen in Eastern Asia; people may parallel it with mustard
Mustard (condiment)
Mustard is a condiment made from the seeds of a mustard plant...
. Hence, in some places, yellow mustard refers to imported mustard sauce; green mustard refers to wasabi.
Another method is using description instead of a single word. For example, languages like Russian and Ukrainian have borrowed words Kuraga and Uruk from Turkic languages. While both fruits are now known to the Western world, there are still no terms for them in English. English speakers have to use "dried apricot
Apricot
The apricot, Prunus armeniaca, is a species of Prunus, classified with the plum in the subgenus Prunus. The native range is somewhat uncertain due to its extensive prehistoric cultivation.- Description :...
without core" and "dried apricot with core" instead.
One particular type of foreign object that poses difficulties is the proper noun. As an illustration, consider another example from Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
, which he published in one of his "Metamagical Themas
Metamagical Themas
Metamagical Themas is a collection of eclectic articles written for Scientific American during the early 1980s by Douglas Hofstadter, and published together as a book in 1985 by Basic Books ....
" columns in Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
. He pondered the question, Who is the first lady of Britain? Well, first ladies reside at the Prime Minister's address, and at the time, the woman living at 10 Downing Street was Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
. But a different attribute that first ladies have is that they are married to heads of government, so perhaps a better answer was Denis Thatcher
Denis Thatcher
Major Sir Denis Thatcher, 1st Baronet, MBE, TD was a British businessman, and the husband of the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. He was born in Lewisham, London, the elder child of a New Zealand-born British businessman, Thomas Herbert Thatcher, and his wife Kathleen, née Bird...
, but he probably would not have relished the title.
Poetry, puns and wordplay
The two areas which most nearly approach total untranslatability are poetryPoetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
and pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
s; poetry is difficult to translate because of its reliance on the sounds (for example, rhyme
Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...
s) and rhythms of the source language; puns, and other similar semantic
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
wordplay, because of how tightly they are tied to the original language. The oldest - best-known - examples, are probably those appearing in Bible translations, e.g. the verse in Genesis (2, 7), which explains why God gave Adam
Adam
Adam is a figure in the Book of Genesis. According to the creation myth of Abrahamic religions, he is the first human. In the Genesis creation narratives, he was created by Yahweh-Elohim , and the first woman, Eve was formed from his rib...
this name: "God created Adam out of soil from the ground"; the original Hebrew text reveals the secret, since the word Adam connotes the word ground (being Adama in Hebrew), whereas translating the verse into other languages loses the original pun.
Similarly, consider the Italian adage "traduttore, traditore": a literal translation is "translator, traitor". The pun is lost, though the meaning persists. (A similar solution can be given, however, in Hungarian, by saying a fordítás: ferdítés, which roughly translates as "translation is distortion".)
That being said, many of the translation procedures discussed here can be used in these cases. For example, the translator can compensate for an "untranslatable" pun in one part of a text by adding a new pun in another part of the translated text.
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
's play The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...
incorporates in its title a pun (resonating in the last line of the play) that conflates the name Ernest with the adjective of quality earnest. The French title of the translated play is "L'importance d'être Constant", replicating and transposing the pun; however, the character Ernest had to be renamed, and the allusion to trickery was lost. (Other French translations include "De l'importance d'être Fidèle" (faithful) and "Il est important d'être Aimé" (loved), with the same idea of a pun on first name / quality adjective.) A recent Hungarian translation of the same play by Ádám Nádasdy
Ádám Nádasdy
Ádám Nádasdy is a Hungarian linguist and poet. He is associate professor at the Department of English Linguistics of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest...
applied a similar solution, giving the subtitle "Szilárdnak kell lenni" (lit. "One must be Szilárd") beside the traditional title "Bunbury", where "Szilárd" is a male name as well as an adjective meaning "solid, firm", or "steady", being itself a translation of the Greek name Constantine.
The Asterix
Asterix
Asterix or The Adventures of Asterix is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo . The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959...
comic strip is renowned for its French puns; its translators have found many ingenious English substitutes.
Other forms of wordplay, such as spoonerism
Spoonerism
A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched . It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner , Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency...
s and palindrome
Palindrome
A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for adjustments to punctuation and word dividers....
s are equally difficult, and often force hard choices on the translator. For example, take the classic palindrome: "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama". A translator might choose to translate it literally into, say, French — "Un homme, un projet, un canal: Panama", if it were used as a caption for a photo of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
(the chief instigator of the Canal), and sacrifice the palindrome. But if the text is meant to give an example of a palindrome, he might elect to sacrifice the literal sense and substitute a French palindrome, such as "Un roc lamina l'animal cornu" ('A boulder swept away the horned animal').
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
discusses the problem of translating a palindrome into Chinese, where such wordplay is theoretically impossible, in his book — which is devoted to the issues and problems of translation, with particular emphasis on the translation of poetry. Another example given by Douglas Hofstadter is the translation of the jabberwocky
Jabberwocky
"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense verse poem written by Lewis Carroll in his 1872 novel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, a sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...
poem by Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, with its wealth of neologisms and portmanteau words, into a number of foreign tongues.
A notable Irish joke is that it is not possible to translate mañana into Gaelic as the Irish "don't have a word that conveys that degree of urgency".
Iconicity
According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "iconicity might be the reason for refraining from translating Hallelujah and Amen in so many languages, as if the sounds of such basic religious notions have to do with their referents themselves – as if by losing the sound, one might lose the meaning. Compare this to the cabbalistic power of letters, for example in the case of gematriaGematria
Gematria or gimatria is a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other, or bear some relation to the number itself as it may apply to a person's age, the calendar year, or the like...
, the method of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures by interchanging words whose letters have the same numerical value when added. A simple example of gematric
Gematria
Gematria or gimatria is a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other, or bear some relation to the number itself as it may apply to a person's age, the calendar year, or the like...
power might be the famous proverb נכנס יין יצא סוד nikhnas yayin yåSå sōd, lit. "entered wine went out secret", i.e. "wine brings out the truth", in vino veritas. The gematric value of יין "wine" is 70 (י=10; י=10; ן=50) and this is also the gematric value of סוד "secret" (ס=60; ו=6; ד=4). Thus, this sentence, according to many Jews at the time, had to be true."