Главная страница «Первого сентября»Главная страница журнала «Английский язык»Содержание №15/2007
FOCUS ON LANGUAGE

The Most Untranslatable Words in the World

Careers in interpreting and translating offer a window on the world, exposing you to a multitude of people, lifestyles and topics. No two days are the same.
In a worldwide poll of professional translators and interpreters googly, spam and gobbledygook have been voted among the most untranslatable words in the English language.
But the most untranslatable word in any language, reckon the translators, is ilunga, a word in the African Bantu language of Tshiluba. It narrowly outpointed shlimazl, a Yiddish word and radiostukacz, a Polish word. And both finished well ahead of klloshar, an Albanian word, which, perhaps fittingly, came in last place.
Other foreign words to make the top 10 included naa, a Japanese word and pochemuchka, the Russian word for a person who asks a lot of questions.

The ten foreign words that were voted hardest to translate:
1. ilunga [Tshiluba word for a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time; to tolerate it a second time; but never a third lime. Note: Tshiluba is a Bantu language spoken in south-eastern Congo, and Zaire]
2. shlimazl [Yiddish for a chronically unlucky person]
3. radiostukacz [Polish for a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain]
4. naa [Japanese word only used in the Kansai area of Japan, to emphasise statements or agree with someone]
5. altahmam [Arabic for a kind of deep sadness]
6. gezellig [Dutch for cosy]
7. saudade [Portuguese for a certain type of longing]
8. selathirupavar [Tamil for a certain type of truancy]
9. pochemuchka [Russian for a person who asks a lot of questions]
10. klloshar [Albanian for loser]

In the English language, googly (as in cricket), spam (as in tinned preserved meat) and gobbledygook (as in Plain English Campaign press releases) were among the most untranslatable words, but the top place was, surprisingly, reserved for plenipotentiary which even many native English-speakers may not know means a special ambassador or envoy invested with full powers.
Whimsy, bumf and serendipity (the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident), poppycock (which is what you may consider all this), chuffed (which is what I am to be writing it) and kitsch (oh, you know) were other English words to make the Top Ten.
The ten English words that were voted hardest to translate:
1. plenipotentiary
2. gobbledygook
3. serendipity
4. poppycock
5. googly
6. spam
7. whimsy
8. bumf
9. chuffed
10. kitsch

The survey was conducted by Today Translations, a London-based translation and interpreting agency, which asked a thousand of its linguists across the world to nominate the words that they found hardest to translate.
“My own vote would have gone to googly”, says Jurga Zilinskiene, the managing director of Today Translations, who worked as an interpreter herself before founding Today and becoming an award-winning businesswoman.
“People sometimes forget that an interpreter, for example, must translate not just from one language to another but from one culture to another”, says Zilinskiene, 27. “Sometimes, the equivalent idea just does not exist in both cultures. I am from Lithuania, for example, and we simply do not have googlies in Lithuania”.
Indeed, confesses Ms. Zilinskiene, although she knew that googly was something to do with cricket she could not have told you for certain that it was, in fact, an off-breaking ball with an apparent leg-break action on the part of the bowler.
Today Translations uses a worldwide network of over 1,500 professional linguists to provide translation and interpreting services. After asking a thousand of this network to nominate words that were problematic to translate, it then asked 50 of them to vote for just one of the top contenders.
Linguists taking part in the poll were native speakers of languages ranging from English and French to Turkish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Dari, Farsi, Amharic, Pashto, Somali, Tamil and many others.

Legal Terms

Which word or phrase commonly used by English lawyers is the hardest to translate? A poll by Today Translations, a London based legal interpreting agency, found that even professional linguists could be thrown by toxic tort and Michaela’s term. The phrase sectioned under the Mental Health Act also caused some head-scratching. But the winner by a short head, was leapfrog appeal. For the benefit of new interpreters, this means a case that goes direct from the High Court to the House of Lords leapfrogging the Court of Appeal. Easy, really.
A leapfrog appeal is an interesting bit of the English legal system: in a case of sufficient public importance, the appeal may go straight form the High Court to the House of Lords, bypassing the Court of Appeal. For those familiar with the children’s game of leapfrog, it’s a useful metaphor. But how to translate it? The game of leapfrog is Bockspringen in German [literally deer-jumping], sauté-mouton in French [sheep-jump].
There are circumlocutions and rough equivalents: Sprung revision [literally “jump-appeal”] in German, for example. But in a survey of 1000 professional legal translators by Today Translations, leapfrog appeal was voted the hardest English legal phrase to translate, closely followed by toxic tort (harmful exposure to a poisonous chemical). Other troubling legal arcane included Michaela’s term (court sittings between November 2nd and 25th).
It cuts both ways. Untranslatable words, especially from big, widely-used languages, usually migrate untranslated: panache and schadenfreude are now English words, le weekend and das Briefing are embedded in French and German. But from smaller languages things can be tricky. Esperanto, for example, has a verb krokodili meaning “to speak your native language when everyone else is speaking Esperanto” – more euphonious than useful, perhaps.

Top ten most untranslatable legal phrases:
1. Leapfrog appeal
2. Toxic tort
3. Sectioned under the Mental Health Act
4. Chambers
5. Trustee
6. Barrister
7. Michaela’s Term
8. Probation officer
9. Common Law
10. Court of Appeal.

Compiled by Galina Goumovskaya
Source: The Times, Tuesday, June 22, 2004