The Untranslatables
’d bet that almost every language has
at least a few words or expressions that
are special to it alone, and don’t have
equivalents in other languages — so-
called “untranslatable” terms.
One of the most famous of these
untranslatables is the French phrase
“esprit de I'escalier” (pronounced
something like “es-pree duh les-cal-
yeh”). Literally, it means “wit of the stairs”
or “mood of the stairs”, and it refers to
thinking up something clever you could
have said in a conversation after it’s
already too late to say it. The expression
was coined by the French Enlightenment
philosopher Denis Diderot, who said that
sensitive guys like him never think of
snappy comebacks until they’re on the
stairs headed home.
Of course, it’s not just French-speaking
people who are aware of this
phenomenon — it’s just that the French
language has a succinct way to express it,
while in English, we have to waste words
by saying something like: “you know how
sometimes you think of a really cool thing
you could’ve said, but the conversation is
already over so you lost your chance…”
There are books devoted to these
“untranslatable” words and phrases, but
here are a few examples:
delendus
This is a Latin word meaning “something
or someone that must be destroyed”. It’s
best known in its feminine form
“delenda”, because of the quote attributed
to Cato the Elder: “Carthago delenda est”
(“Carthage must be destroyed,” or more
literally “Carthage is a delenda”). Cato
supposedly said this at the end of every
speech he made to the Roman Senate,
regardless of what the speech was about,
and eventually Rome did in fact destroy
Carthage.
夫妻相
This Chinese word is pronounced “foo-
chee-shang” and literally meaning
“husband-wife appearance”. It describes a
couple who have been together for so
long that they’ve begun to look alike.
Although English doesn’t have a word for
this, we generally understand the concept.
In fact, some Americans say that people
can start to look like their household pets
after a while (an idea which Chinese
people seem to think is hilarious). The
resemblance can also be referred to as 夫
妻脸 (“foo-chee-lee’yen") meaning
“husband-wife face”.
загуляться
This Russian word is pronounced “za-
gool-yah-tsah”, and it means “to call in
sick to work so you can go get drunk”.
The definition can vary a little, depending
on the source — one respected dictionary
translates it as just “to carouse till one
forgets the time” — but I’ve been assured
on good authority that calling in sick to
work is indeed the traditional way to
“zagoolyatsa”.
In a similar vein, we have the Russian
army slang term гаситься (“gah-see-
tsah”), which means “to hide somewhere
in order to avoid doing work”.
Torschlusspanik
A famous German untranslatable,
pronounced something like “tawsh-luss-
pah-nik,” it literally means “gate-closing
panic”. It refers to the fear that time is
passing and opportunities are being lost
forever. The English-language
expressions “midlife crisis” and “biological
clock” would each be considered different
types of Torschlusspanik.
Some words that are considered
untranslatable are linked closely to a
particular culture. For example, Chinese
has the word
孝道
It’s pronounced “shao-dao”, and it usually
gets rendered in English as “filial piety”,
but a more explicit definition might be
“honoring and obeying one’s parents”.
China’s Confucian values make the
honoring of parents important enough to
have its own word — in fact, it can even
be shortened to just “shao” (孝), as in “Our
son isn’t being very ‘shao’ today.”
Another culture-specific word is the
Arabic verb “basmal”, written
which means “to say ‘in the name of
Allah’.” Although we don’t have anything
like this in English, it could maybe be
thought of as using “hallelujah” as a verb
— so “the preacher likes to ‘hallelujah’ a
lot during his sermons” could be roughly
equivalent to “the imam likes to ‘basmal’
a lot during his sermons.” But that said,
“basmal” is seldom used nowadays.
Untranslatables sometimes turn out to
exist in multiple languages. Take another
well-known example, the German word
“Schadenfreude” (“sha-den-froy-duh”). It
literally means “damage-joy” or “injury-
joy”, but it’s used to describe a feeling of
happiness over someone else’s
misfortune.
This cynical German expression has been
adopted into English and a few other
languages, but German wasn’t necessarily
the first to have such a word. Aristotle
used an almost identical Greek term:
έπιχαιρέκακος
pronounced “eh-pi-kha-rey-kah-kos”,
which also means rejoicing over the
suffering of another.