Over the last several months, Beyond Words readers from around the world have contacted us to share their experiences with particular words that are difficult to translate.
If you enjoyed our Ten Most Difficult Words to Translate article, here are some additions that have caught our attention. Thanks to everyone who sent words! Keep them coming for our next installment.
Hyggelig
In Denmark, the word Hyggelig is used often, and is said to be closely tied to the Danish national character. A dictionary will provide translations along the lines of cozy, warm, and nice, but a typical Dane will argue that these words don’t come close to capturing the full meaning of the word. Perhaps a true Dane would like to share some thoughts here?
Wabi-Sabi
We recently featured an entire blog article on the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi. It is a compound word with a long history, and carries a lot of meaning. Put succinctly, it’s a way of living that emphasizes finding beauty in imperfection, and accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay.
Duende
This Spanish word has a long and interesting history. It’s original use was to describe a mythical entity that lives in forests, sort of like a fairy or a sprite, that possesses human beings and causes them to feel awe, fear, or a sense of beauty in their natural surroundings. Since being updated by the Spanish poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca, in the early 20th century, it is now used to refer to the mysterious power of a work of art to deeply move a person.
Saudade
This Portuguese word was also featured in our most beautiful words post a while back. It refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.
Fairness
This past January, a blog post from the Atlantic Monthly by economist Bart Wilson sparked a debate about whether the English word Fair can be accurately translated. In the Beyond Words analysis of the Fairness translation debate, we explored all the sides, and discussed Wilson’s position that Fairness is a uniquely Anglo concept that carries historical baggage making it very different from notions of equity and right vs. wrong. You decide.
Hyggelig does indeed carry all those connotations and more. It usually involves people and food, but can also just mean relaxing on one’s own.
I think it’s more that we apply the same word to so many situations as anything related to our ‘national character’, though.
As Niklas points out, hyggelig can be used in a lot of different situations. Besides the adjective hyggelig, there is also the verb hygge. To hygge is to have a relaxed, informal, good time. You can hygge with others or on your own and with whatever you are doing, even your work. Thus something that is hyggelig is anything or anyone that invokes this situation. It can be anything that is informal/relaxed/welcoming. A person, a dinner, a day at the beach and the furnishing of a home can all be hyggelige.
Here’s another untranslatable Japanese expression:
“Moshi-moshi”, or “Moshee-moshee”
This is the way they say ‘hello’, but only on the telephone. We loved it so much that here back in Canada that’s become our own traditional telephone greeting.
I find the concept of fairness interesting. I’ve known people to refer to unfairness as being ‘fair to one side, but not fair to the other’. Obviously this is a misunderstanding of what fairness actually means, but maybe that is part of the reason it’s such an obscure concept linguistically.
The classical Tamil word “pasalai” gives the same meaning as the Portugeese “Saudade”. However, that word is not in ordinary colloquial usage anymore.
References to the concept of “pasalai” can be found at
http://www.ibiblio.org/sripedia/ebooks/tvm/tvm9-7.html and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangam_landscape
What about well known words that are on the same scale of translation skew. eg camino or mañana.
i don’t think duende is used to “refer to the mysterious power of a work of art to deeply move a person”. spanish is my first language and duende is more like an elf; and lorca didn’t updated it, just made a metaphor, nothing more
I agree with Carlos. It´s like an elf or a goblin.
Hyggelig,
according to what I read here it must be about the same as the Dutch “gezellig”.
This is a new topic.
We need a new word in English. Most people now use the word “they’ when the gender of the singular person is unknown, instead of using the correct “he”. Such as “My teacher sent me to the principal’s office today.” “Why did they do that?”
I suggest using the Mandarin word “ta” for a pronoun of a singular person of unknown gender. Or, invent an entirely new word that rhymes with he, she, we.
re: Alicia’s suggestion to create a pronoun for a singular person of unknown sex.
It has always been proper practice to use the masculine form in the case of either singular unknown gender or for humankind (mankind) as a whole. To create, and introduce into common usage, a new word only because a number of people can’t be bothered to use the rules of the American English language correctly is simply falling prey to the dumbing down of America.
There is another problem with the word she suggests, the Mandarin “ta”. It is also part of an English greeting, rather a good-bye, “ta-ta”, also used as “ta!”
It seems to me that when we have a perfectly good word, or set of words, available to us that creating new ones simply because some people are not using the proper words is absurd.
as a brazilian, I’ve always known “saudade” was untranslatable, but I’ve never thought of “cafuné” as untranslatable too.
I agree “fairness” is fairly tough to translate, at least to my mother tongue.
Totally disagree with Carlos and Natxo. I’m from Sevilla (Spain) and there we actually use “duende” when we refer to people with special abilities, mostly in flamenco dancing or singing, so we say that somebody has duende to express how he/she masters his/her art and how he/she conveys feelings with what he/she does. I didn’t know Lorca was the one who updated the meaning but it totally makes sense, since he was from Andalucía too. Hope this explanation helps!
I have the hardest… try to explain the TRUE meaning of spanish’s CHINGAR, i wrote an essay two pages long of that word