[RiderOfGiraffes]

I'm not sufficiently familiar with Japanese, but I can relate two specific stories from my own experience.

While travelling and working in Sweden I picked up enough of the language (alas, now gone) to converse reasonably well over dinner with people I hadn't met before. They were fluent in English, my colleague was fluent in Swedish.

I asked about the word "varsågod." It seemed to have many translations, often different for different contexts, and I was wondering how they all perceived it. The consensus came only after about an hour of back and forth. There is no translation, even when the context is known.

The best I've come up with is "All is well," but that really, really doesn't cover it. Sometimes it means "You're welcome," sometimes it means "Here you are," and there are other contexts.

And the English translations don't carry the extra meanings, the baggage. It just feels untranslatable. No translation I've seen or heard carries all of the meanings and nuances.

Another example is from French. The phrase "Je vous en prie" is often translated as "You're welcome," but it's also very, very formal. You'd hear it from staff in hotels, perhaps, and perhaps in the very best restaurants.

But the point is that while it effectively means "You're welcome" it actually carries more information. It also says: and our relationship is a formal one, such as staff to employer, and I'm in the subordinate position.

There is no way to say that in English without spelling it out explicitly, and once you've done so you've lost the sense of the original anyway.

It's like explaining a joke. Once you've done so you've given the understanding needed, but lost the humor.

Similarly with so many things in translation. To carry all the meaning properly sometimes you have to explain or describe the meaning, and then it's no longer actually a translation.

The thing I find most interesting is just how many monoglots claim that this can't possibly be true and give many excellent reasons, while so many polyglots simply accept it as fact. My wife is fluent in French and works copy-editing translations from German (and other languages) into English. I've seen this problem "in action" as it were, and it's why good translators cost so much, while mediocre translators don't.

EDIT: corrected the Swedish word - thanks. My spoken and reading Swedish was always better than my written.

[thirdusername]

I think you meant to type the composite word "varsågod" (and not "Be so god" ^^), it's not a phrase. A similar problem exist with "lagom" which roughly means something like: "enough, not to much or to little.", with a strong positive meaning. It also goes the other way too as computer engineer doesn't have a good exact translation as the English "engineer" is more nuanced than the Swedish "Ingengör".

If you feel like procrastinating and want to have a laugh at how ambiguous and strange Swedish can be I recommend Mastering Swedish by slay radio: http://www.slayradio.org/mastering_swedish.php

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Thanks - corrected. My written Swedish was always lousy.

[yummyfajitas]

Another example is from French. The phrase "Je vous en prie"...effectively means "You're welcome" it actually carries more information. It also says: and our relationship is a formal one, such as staff to employer, and I'm in the subordinate position.

It sounds as if you are saying the lack of a short code in a language makes a concept untranslatable.

But that doesn't seem right. In 1943, I couldn't translate a document about nuclear reactors into French or Spanish because the only languages with words for "nuclear reactor" were English and German. Does that make "nuclear reactor" untranslatable?

Of course, once the concept became relevant to French speakers, they borrowed or created a short coding.

From what you've said, you can translate "je vous en prie" to "you're welcome and I mean that with the respect a subordinate accords his superiors". That just doesn't have a short coding in English because the concept being encoded is rarely relevant to English speakers.

In programming terms, (map f lst) translates to c, it's just not as short.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

But largely "Je vous en prie" does not translate as "you're welcome and I mean that with the respect a subordinate accords his superiors". There's more, and I really, really can't explain it, because I simply don't have the words. It's not just that there's no short phrase - the fact that it's a short phrase does itself carry information.

Your point about "nuclear reactor" is well taken, but, ultimately, not really relevant. No amount of explanation makes a joke funny to someone who doesn't "get it." Further, many coordinate bilinguals never get this feeling, simply because they're coordinates. Compound bilinguals do get it, and find it impossible to explain.

And here I am, once again, trying to explain a joke to someone who doesn't get it.

(Please note - that last was an analogy. This isn't a joke, it is real that there are some terms that just don't translate, even when you expand your translation into an explanation. Some things need to be experienced, and cannot be appreciated from logic and reason alone.)

[yummyfajitas]

I'm inherently suspicious when someone says something like "conveys information", but then says "logic and reason" don't work.

Would it be fair to say that the particular phrase, rather than conveying information, causes a particular emotional reaction in the hearer? I may not experience what you experience and some particular phrase might simply be a short code for that feeling.

But that doesn't mean the information cannot be conveyed. I can explain fairly easily what 'orange' means to a blind person: "Objects and parts of objects are associated to unique colors, which humans can distinguish via vision. [geometric optics skipped.] One particular color is orange."

They haven't experienced orange, in the sense that the "orange" set of neurons in their brain hasn't fired. But that doesn't mean they lack information when I say "object X is orange."

[retroflexzy]

> I'm inherently suspicious when someone says something like "conveys information", but then says "logic and reason" don't work.

Actually, the study of semantics, which is highly logical, will often fail at describing the "true meaning" of an utterance. This is where pragmatics come in, and, frankly, a far more interesting area of study and occasionally even applicable in every day life.

The most useful thing I got out of my semantics course was that I never, ever, want to take that stream ever again.

[RiderOfGiraffes]

Well, I can't say much more really. Natural language semantics are tough, and I've clearly failed to communicate to you the idea that some phrases in other languages can't really be translated. They can sort-of be explained, sometimes, but even then I remain unconvinced that the true sense of the original can always be retained.

Personally, I've experienced it, and perhaps the fact that I can't explain it to you, who haven't experienced it, is more convincing than the attempts at explanations.