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 #2 (permalink) Wed Jan 25, 2006 16:37 pm Untranslatable words? |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: | | ...English has no word for the German term "Schadenfreude", so we just use the German word. |
Aren't malicious joy or gloating delight equivalents of Schadenfreude?
Every language seem to have its own puns, untranslateable to the other languages. English, for example:
| Quote: | - Hey, waiter!
- Yes, sir!
- What's this?
- It's bean soup, sir.
- No matter what it's been, what's it now?!!
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Sidle Jinks
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| #3 (permalink) Wed Jan 25, 2006 20:09 pm Untranslatable words? |
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I can only come up with a few examples:
As far as I know, the slang phrase ‘I want out’, has no equivalent in French or Spanish.
The English translation for ‘sympathique/simp?tico/ sympathisch’ (like ‘friendly’ for instance) does not really convey the exact meaning of the word.
I don’t know of any word for the German noun ‘Vorfreude’ (what you feel when you are looking forward to something) that exactly describes it. |
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Conchita
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| #4 (permalink) Thu Jan 26, 2006 14:09 pm Untranslatable words? |
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| Conchita wrote: | | I don’t know of any word for the German noun ‘Vorfreude’ (what you feel when you are looking forward to something) that exactly describes it. |
In Russian it corresponds to 'предвкушение радости' (predvkushenie radosti, transliterated, not trascribed) and English equivalent seems to be 'foretaste of joy' or something like that.
German word Vorfreude consists of two words: preposition vor (before) and noun Freude (joy, gladness, pleasure). And their composition gives something like "before joy" or, literally, "foretaste of joy".
Something like this...
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Sidle Jinks
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| #5 (permalink) Thu Jan 26, 2006 14:54 pm Untranslatable words? |
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| Sidle Jinks wrote: | | Conchita wrote: | | I don’t know of any word for the German noun ‘Vorfreude’ (what you feel when you are looking forward to something) that exactly describes it. |
German word Vorfreude consists of two words: preposition vor (before) and noun Freude (joy, gladness, pleasure). And their composition gives something like "before joy" or, literally, "foretaste of joy".
Something like this... |
I think it would be more commonly expressed as "eager anticipation". |
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Jamie (K)
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| #6 (permalink) Thu Jan 26, 2006 14:59 pm Untranslatable words? |
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| Sidle Jinks wrote: | | Jamie (K) wrote: | | ...English has no word for the German term "Schadenfreude", so we just use the German word. |
Aren't malicious joy or gloating delight equivalents of Schadenfreude? |
Yes, but those aren't an individual word, and we frequently say and write "schadenfreude". I still think no English expression really matches that word perfectly. For example, you can take malicious joy in gossiping about someone, but it's not schadenfreude, because nothing bad has happened to him just from your gossip.
| Sidle Jinks wrote: | Every language seem to have its own puns, untranslateable to the other languages. English, for example:
| Quote: | - Hey, waiter!
- Yes, sir!
- What's this?
- It's bean soup, sir.
- No matter what it's been, what's it now?!!
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This pun actually would not work in most of North America, because for us "bean" and "been" are not homophones. "Been" sounds the same as "bin" for us. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #7 (permalink) Thu Jan 26, 2006 20:20 pm Bin been bean |
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Hi,
Surely even in North America you can emphasise 'been' and make the vowel sound longer. The same 'bin' sound is also heard in my neck of the woods: Where've you been (bin)?
Alan
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Alan
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| #8 (permalink) Sat Jan 28, 2006 6:07 am Bin been bean |
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| Alan wrote: | | Surely even in North America you can emphasise 'been' and make the vowel sound longer. The same 'bin' sound is also heard in my neck of the woods: Where've you been (bin)? |
Sure we could emphasize it, but it would remain a stretched-out "bin". If you pronounced it like "bean", people would think you were imitating someone from some other country, like an Englishman or an extreme Canadian announcer. Some people wouldn't even figure that out, if you said it in General American and just pronounced "been" as [bi:n]. I think people here would need a minute to figure out the pun. Maybe they'd get it quicker if they heard it on a BBC comedy, where everybody was talking like that. |
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Jamie (K)
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FrankU
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| #10 (permalink) Mon Mar 13, 2006 19:08 pm Untranslatable words |
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| FrankU wrote: | Hello Jamie, how is it going in Detroit? A couple of weeks ago you started that thread about untranslatable words and from your previous posts I take it you speak German so you probably know the word doch. Now, this is word that has no direct translation in English. You need an entire phrase to say the same thing English. The Germans need just one word  . |
It's the same thing with "denn" and a lot of those German words that sometimes mean something and sometimes mean nothing. "Doch" is particularly problematic, because it can mean "definitely", "however", and quite a number of other things. |
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Jamie (K)
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Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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