The most common reasons for words being deemed untranslatable are cultural differences and nuances in language that cannot be conveyed with one single word. For example, the German word Schadenfreude roughly translates to “enjoyment from others' misfortune” but does not have a direct translation in English.
Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a lacuna, or lexical gap.
Often languages do not have an exact match for a certain phrase or word when being translated into another language. This makes language translation difficult because it means that the translator needs to find the closest equivalent or explain the concept.
Words or phrases are considered untranslatable when there is no precise corresponding meaning in a target language.
Linguistic theoreticians first proposed the idea of limitation of translatability in Western translation theory. In the practice of translation, there must be loss of messages in communication, so the limitation of translatability is the permanent phenomenon in the transfer of languages.
Whilst translation may achieve the highest level of accuracy possible, there is a sense that it will never truly capture every nuance of the language and culture from which it is being translated, and that some of the target language's culture will slip in no matter how hard one tries to keep it out.
Interestingly, the hardest word in the world to translate is Ilunga. This word belongs to the Luba-Kasai or Tshiluba language, which is spoken by more than 6 million speakers in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Word Creation When Faced With Untranslatable Words
This is basically taking words from another language and adjusting their usage to the rules and grammar of the target language. Sometimes the spelling may be changed to correspond with the word's pronunciation in the target language.
Not too long ago, we looked at some words that have no translatable equivalent in English. We now know that Kummerspeck, which literally translates to “grief bacon” in German, refers to weight gained from emotional overeating. If you're trying to express embarrassment for others in Spanish, you'd say Pena Ajena.
not willing to work or use any effort: Managers had complained that the workers were lazy and unreliable.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
All the Latin-based languages, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Romanian are also a good bet, especially Spanish. All of these languages have thousands of words that are almost identical to words we already know in English, owing to the Latin roots.
Radar stands for radio detecting and ranging. As you can imagine as these words are completely different in other languages, the word radar itself cannot be translated.
Often, translations are only considered fluent if they relate to the target language's cultural specificities, that is, if the translator has both translated and domesticated the text.
The process of translation is complex and requires the human touch. Machines have not yet been able to replicate the use of language in the way humans are able to do so. Translation has many layers and the nuances of each language are not something that can be programmed into a translation tool.
Just think of your own language… it only shares a linguistic group with a dozen others. So are there any difficult-to-translate, or even untranslatable words? Of course, there are. Untranslatable words do exist.
A 2021 study conducted by the UCLA Medical Center found that Google Translate preserved the overall meaning for 82.5% of the translations. But the accuracy between languages spanned 55% to 94%. Sometimes, Google Translate's precision is shockingly good.
DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator.
Russian is allegedly one of the most complex languages to learn; its Cyrillic alphabet is enough to scare you away. In fact, the Foreign Service Institute classifies it as a category-four language. But don't let that intimidate you. Learning the Russian language is far from impossible.
The Russian language is easier when you look at their writing style. On the basis of Sounds: There are more sounds in the Korean language as compared to the Russian language.