DIRECTORY OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
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About Site | What’s New? | Feedback | Help
My Writing Portfolio at www.bykairos.com MAIN DIRECTORY
- Word Lists Home | Featured Word Lists
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- The Beauty of Language and Words - the words we discover and find through reading
- Weaving Meaning in a Web of Words - the words we use for communicating & storytelling
- The Universe and World We Live In - the words in exotic languages new to us
- People, Places and Things - the words we use to understand ourselves & the world around us
- The Colors of Our Creativity - the words we use to create and innovate
- The Dark Side of the Moon - the words of a darker nature
- My Books: Series of Beautiful Words.
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Search site below or use Advanced Search to search the site & my vocabulary books.
What happens when there is a need for a word to define an obscure thought, idea or feeling and there is no word in English?
Is “close enough” ever good enough?
DIRECTORY
INDEX OF ALPHABETICAL WORD LISTS
Part 1: Words From - [A to C ]
Part 2: Words From - [D to F]
Part 3: Words From - [G to K]
Part 4: Words From - [L to R]
Part 5: Words From - [S to Z]
INDEX OF COLLECTION BY THEME
Feelings & Emotions
Hilarity and Laughter
Love and Affection
Happiness and Joy
Deep Contemplation
Life Experience
Characteristics in People
INDEX OF COLLECTION BY LANGUAGE
French ~ German ~ Greek - Hindi ~ Japanese ~ Latin ~ Spanish
DOWNLOAD AS A WORD GUIDE
REFERENCE ARTICLES:
How the Translation Process Works
What “Dead” Means in Language Classification
What You Need to Know About Words
Part 1: Words From - [A to C ]
Part 2: Words From - [D to F]
Part 3: Words From - [G to K]
Part 4: Words From - [L to R]
Part 5: Words From - [S to Z]
INDEX OF COLLECTION BY THEME
Feelings & Emotions
Hilarity and Laughter
Love and Affection
Happiness and Joy
Deep Contemplation
Life Experience
Characteristics in People
INDEX OF COLLECTION BY LANGUAGE
French ~ German ~ Greek - Hindi ~ Japanese ~ Latin ~ Spanish
DOWNLOAD AS A WORD GUIDE
REFERENCE ARTICLES:
How the Translation Process Works
What “Dead” Means in Language Classification
What You Need to Know About Words
RELATED WORD LISTS:
SITEMAP OF WORLD LANGUAGES
This page is the complete sitemap for all foreign language focused word lists including the country pages in the main category, Languages From Around the World, pages from the special feature Words of the World and the index of pages in the new category Translating Your World which presents Untranslatable Words in both an alphabetical collection, language and by defined themes.
RELATED CATEGORY:
LANGUAGES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Main category of word lists from an array of beautiful languages like Sanskrit, Russian, German, Old English, Irish Gaelic, Scottish and the beauty of Urdu.
RELATED FEATURE:
WORDS OF THE WORLD - a more detailed focus and study of the words of selected world languages.
We seek to define the:
SITEMAP OF WORLD LANGUAGES
This page is the complete sitemap for all foreign language focused word lists including the country pages in the main category, Languages From Around the World, pages from the special feature Words of the World and the index of pages in the new category Translating Your World which presents Untranslatable Words in both an alphabetical collection, language and by defined themes.
RELATED CATEGORY:
LANGUAGES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Main category of word lists from an array of beautiful languages like Sanskrit, Russian, German, Old English, Irish Gaelic, Scottish and the beauty of Urdu.
RELATED FEATURE:
WORDS OF THE WORLD - a more detailed focus and study of the words of selected world languages.
We seek to define the:
TRANSLATING YOUR WORLD
We have a colorful and beautiful array of languages in our world with so many words to add to our vocabularies. It is not the intention of these lists to teach a language, but to introduce you to the beautiful words you will find within. If you need help with pronunciation, a great resource is Google Translate - you can hear the word spoken out loud.
TALKING TRANSLATION
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source language by means of an equivalent target language. English draws a distinction (which does not exist in every language) between translating (a written text) and interpreting (oral or signed communication between users of different languages); under this distinction, translation can begin only after the appearance of writing within a language community.
TRACING THE ETYMOLOGY
The English word "translation" derives from the Latin word translatio, which comes from trans, meaning "across" + ferre, meaning “to carry" or "to bring" (-latio in turn coming from latus, the past participle of ferre). Thus, translatio is "a carrying across" or "a bringing across" text from one language to another.
The Ancient Greek term for translation, μετάφρασις (metaphrasis), meaning "a speaking across", has supplied English with metaphrase meaning “literal or "word-for-word", translation,” contrasted with paraphrase meaning "a saying in other words", from παράφρασις or paraphrasis. Metaphrase corresponds, in one of the more recent terminologies, to "formal equivalence"; and ‘paraphrase’ meaning “to dynamic equivalence.
Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into days and nights of antiquity and show remarkable continuities.
SEE ALSO:
Tracing the History of a Word With Etymology
CONCEPTS OF FIDELITY AND FELICITY
Fidelity meaning "faithfulness" and felicity meaning “transparency,” are dual ideals in translation and are often at odds. A 17th-century French critic coined the phrase "les belles infidèles" to suggest that translations can be either faithful or beautiful, but not both. Fidelity is the “extent to which a translation accurately renders the meaning of the source text, without distortion.” Transparency is the “extent to which a translation appears to a native speaker of the target language to have originally been written in that language, and conforms to its grammar, syntax and idiom.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) wrote in his preface to the translation anthology Sylvae:
“Where I have taken away some of [the original authors'] expressions, and cut them shorter, it may possibly be on this consideration, that what was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, would not appear so shining in the English.”
Unlike a metaphrase, which represents a "formal equivalent" of the source, a paraphrase represents a "dynamic equivalent" thereof. A metaphrase attempts to translate a text literally but a paraphrase conveys the essential thought expressed in a source text at the expense of literality.
LOST IN TRANSLATION
We often hear people use the term ‘lost in translation’ when referring to mishaps or mistakes in translating from language to another. Some languages are simply unable to capture the true essence of a word when it has been translated from another language.
These words are known as untranslatable words
ORIGINS OF ENGLISH
As a distinct branch of the Indo-European language tree, English dates back to the migration of Germanic tribes to the British Isles around the 5th Century CE. Ever since, it has enthusiastically embraced words from diverse languages and voraciously added them to it’s lexicon. Words were often being anglicized so people were easily unaware of the extent to which English has been assembled using parts taken from other languages. So many words which seem English actually have their roots in Arabic for example, algebra, algorithm, zenith or zero. If we dig into our rich lexicon we will find English is a veritable menagerie of ‘borrowed’ words.
LACUNAS, LEXICALS AND LOANS
There are a lot of actions, feelings and emotions that we don’t have a word for in English. So we look to other languages to fill that need. These words are called untranslatable because they describe something we can’t translate into English. A text or utterance that is considered to be "untranslatable" is considered a lacuna, or lexical gap. You may have also heard it referred to as a loan-word.
When translators talk about the untranslatable, they often reinforce the notion that each language has its own 'genius', or an 'essence' that naturally sets it apart from all other languages and reflects something of the 'soul' of its culture or people. Travel affords is the opportunity for a brief stay in another land to experience languages first hand. But there are only so many trips we can take and many of us may never get to take any. But by learning untranslatable words, we get to explore these different worlds from our comfy couch in the den.
TALKING TRANSLATION
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source language by means of an equivalent target language. English draws a distinction (which does not exist in every language) between translating (a written text) and interpreting (oral or signed communication between users of different languages); under this distinction, translation can begin only after the appearance of writing within a language community.
TRACING THE ETYMOLOGY
The English word "translation" derives from the Latin word translatio, which comes from trans, meaning "across" + ferre, meaning “to carry" or "to bring" (-latio in turn coming from latus, the past participle of ferre). Thus, translatio is "a carrying across" or "a bringing across" text from one language to another.
The Ancient Greek term for translation, μετάφρασις (metaphrasis), meaning "a speaking across", has supplied English with metaphrase meaning “literal or "word-for-word", translation,” contrasted with paraphrase meaning "a saying in other words", from παράφρασις or paraphrasis. Metaphrase corresponds, in one of the more recent terminologies, to "formal equivalence"; and ‘paraphrase’ meaning “to dynamic equivalence.
Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into days and nights of antiquity and show remarkable continuities.
SEE ALSO:
Tracing the History of a Word With Etymology
CONCEPTS OF FIDELITY AND FELICITY
Fidelity meaning "faithfulness" and felicity meaning “transparency,” are dual ideals in translation and are often at odds. A 17th-century French critic coined the phrase "les belles infidèles" to suggest that translations can be either faithful or beautiful, but not both. Fidelity is the “extent to which a translation accurately renders the meaning of the source text, without distortion.” Transparency is the “extent to which a translation appears to a native speaker of the target language to have originally been written in that language, and conforms to its grammar, syntax and idiom.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) wrote in his preface to the translation anthology Sylvae:
“Where I have taken away some of [the original authors'] expressions, and cut them shorter, it may possibly be on this consideration, that what was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, would not appear so shining in the English.”
Unlike a metaphrase, which represents a "formal equivalent" of the source, a paraphrase represents a "dynamic equivalent" thereof. A metaphrase attempts to translate a text literally but a paraphrase conveys the essential thought expressed in a source text at the expense of literality.
LOST IN TRANSLATION
We often hear people use the term ‘lost in translation’ when referring to mishaps or mistakes in translating from language to another. Some languages are simply unable to capture the true essence of a word when it has been translated from another language.
These words are known as untranslatable words
ORIGINS OF ENGLISH
As a distinct branch of the Indo-European language tree, English dates back to the migration of Germanic tribes to the British Isles around the 5th Century CE. Ever since, it has enthusiastically embraced words from diverse languages and voraciously added them to it’s lexicon. Words were often being anglicized so people were easily unaware of the extent to which English has been assembled using parts taken from other languages. So many words which seem English actually have their roots in Arabic for example, algebra, algorithm, zenith or zero. If we dig into our rich lexicon we will find English is a veritable menagerie of ‘borrowed’ words.
LACUNAS, LEXICALS AND LOANS
There are a lot of actions, feelings and emotions that we don’t have a word for in English. So we look to other languages to fill that need. These words are called untranslatable because they describe something we can’t translate into English. A text or utterance that is considered to be "untranslatable" is considered a lacuna, or lexical gap. You may have also heard it referred to as a loan-word.
When translators talk about the untranslatable, they often reinforce the notion that each language has its own 'genius', or an 'essence' that naturally sets it apart from all other languages and reflects something of the 'soul' of its culture or people. Travel affords is the opportunity for a brief stay in another land to experience languages first hand. But there are only so many trips we can take and many of us may never get to take any. But by learning untranslatable words, we get to explore these different worlds from our comfy couch in the den.
What happens when there is a need for a word to define an obscure thought, idea or feeling and there is no word in English?
Is “close enough” ever good enough?
UNITING THE WORLD
Some argue that no words are technically untranslatable since you can usually explain a word’s meaning in just a few words. Others argue that since all words have complex meanings, all words are “untranslatable.” We can leave the translation up to the professionals and just enjoy the new words we add to our own vocabulary.
By learning new words like these we identify with various cultures thousands of miles away based on the context and meaning of the words. This unites us as one world and reminds us of our common humanity. We may not have an English equivalent for the Tagalog word ‘gigil’, but we know exactly how it feels to have the urge to squeeze the cheeks of our child because we love them so much. That is the beauty of language and words. Universality.
LET’S LOOK AT THE WORDS!
A BEAUTIFUL WORD ... a vocabulary site for logophiles, writers and word lovers that is part of
A SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
Collection of Vocabulary Books, Sites and Resources
Series Homepage | View Sites | Download Books
Words are also posted on twitter under the hashtags #beautifulwords and #wordoftheday and shared visually on pinterest bulletin boards
ABOUT SITE | SITEMAPS | SEARCH | FEEDBACK
Content by Kairos ~ @kairosoflife
Homepage | Portfolio | Contact
Original content © 2021 Copyright, Kairos
A SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
Collection of Vocabulary Books, Sites and Resources
Series Homepage | View Sites | Download Books
Words are also posted on twitter under the hashtags #beautifulwords and #wordoftheday and shared visually on pinterest bulletin boards
ABOUT SITE | SITEMAPS | SEARCH | FEEDBACK
Content by Kairos ~ @kairosoflife
Homepage | Portfolio | Contact
Original content © 2021 Copyright, Kairos
