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
Consider some very simple words.
Mother in English and مادر (pronounced madar) in Farsi mean exactly the same thing. So mother is a proper translation of مادر to English.
Aunt in English can mean the sister of one’s father or mother or the wife of one’s uncle or aunt. In Farsi, the word خاله (pronounced khaleh) means the sister of one’s mother. There’s another word for the sister of one’s father. There’s another word for the wife on one’s father’s brother and one for the wife of one’s mother’s brother.
So if you translate خاله into English as Aunt, you’re losing the information that she is your mothers sister. It’s not a perfect translation.
Going in the other direction, if you want to translate aunt into Farsi, you have to find out more about the aunt so you know which word to use. And in using the proper word, you are giving the reader more information than the English original gave. So, again, it’s not a perfect translation.
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