1274: Truly Untranslatable Jun 6, 2018

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While it has been discussed on this blog before than no concept is truly untranslatable, there are certain phrases which will not have the same sort of significance in one language as it will in another. Words in this group include 'apartheid', which directly translates to 'separation' (lit. 'apartness')  or 'shoa' which is Hebrew for 'catastrophe' but is a common synonym alongside 'holocaust' found in English. There are more lighthearted ones too such as names for holidays, like 'Ramadan', which here comes from a word meaning 'be hot' but obviously has a lot more meaning than 'be hot' conveys in English. This is all the case because those terms have value in a way that does not carry over, and so even though the translation for those words is not possible in order to capture the full gravity, they can always be adopted.

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