Comments on: 5 More Difficult Words to Translate

By: Patricia

Patricia — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:23:27 +0000

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 Andaluc�a too. Hope this explanation helps!

By: monstro

monstro — Sat, 29 May 2010 06:06:16 +0000

as a brazilian, I’ve always known “saudade” was untranslatable, but I’ve never thought of “cafun�” as untranslatable too.

I agree “fairness” is fairly tough to translate, at least to my mother tongue.

By: segue

segue — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:24:06 +0000

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.

By: Alicia Nossov

Alicia Nossov — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 18:03:47 +0000

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.

By: doh

doh — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:34:07 +0000

Hyggelig,
according to what I read here it must be about the same as the Dutch “gezellig”.

By: Natxo

Natxo — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 23:43:45 +0000

I agree with Carlos. It�s like an elf or a goblin.

By: carlos

carlos — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:01:41 +0000

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

By: anon-blah

anon-blah — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:51:23 +0000

What about well known words that are on the same scale of translation skew. eg camino or ma�ana.

By: Sundar

Sundar — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:17:10 +0000

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

By: Sundar

Sundar — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:10:21 +0000

The classical Tamil word “pasalai” gives the same meaning as the Portugeese “Saudade”. However, that word is not in ordinary colloquial usage anymore.