What does it mean when people say there’s no proper translation from a non-English word to English?

Question

You see it quite often when someone will say ‘there’s a word for that…there’s no direct translation but it’s loosely like…’ then proceeds to give it a translation.

I saw one recently of kummerspeck, I think the commenter said it was ‘food you eat when you’re sad’ or ‘grief bacon’.

I would also like to preemptively apologise for my ignorance.

In: 37

Answer 1

As you already have a lot of explanations, ill give you an example.

SAUDADE

the most beautiful word in portuguese, its the feeling of missing something, someplace, or more often someone.

You can say “I miss my mother”, but there is not word for the feeling of missing. In portuguese we would say “Eu sinto SAUDADE da minha mae” which would translate to “I feel ‘XYZ’ of my mother”.