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

In Dutch we have a special word for a small canal inside a city. We call this a *gracht*. English just has the word *canal* which also refers to larger waterways outside cities, for which we have a different word, *kanaal*.

So yeah, I just gave you definition for the word *gracht*. But there isn’t a single word in English that maps onto this definition. I have to give you a short sentence instead. Either that, or we have to introduce a new word into English that we all agree will have this same definition (or we have to agree that I’ll just use the Dutch word for the rest of our conversation – more on that possibility later).

In other cases, words may be so specific and so loaded with cultural baggage that it takes an entire paragraph, or even several pages of explanation. At that point, it’s really questionable whether you can still call this a “translation”. Translation implies that you could take, say, a sentence in one language, and turn it into a sentence in another language. If you have to give a 500-word explanation as a “translation” for one word, I would argue you haven’t really turned one language into another language. Instead, you’ve just **taught** the other person one word in the original language.

It’s not uncommon for words like these to enter as loan words into a foreign language, by the way. Take the German word *schadenfreude*, which means to experience pleasure at another person’s misfortune (typically because you hate that person or have some reason to wish them harm). This is now a term that is used quite often in English, and arguably has become an English word. The reason why English borrowed this word from German is precisely because English didn’t have a good equivalent for this word, and yet it describes a very useful concept that English speakers want to be able to express in one word. If it had had a translation, English would not have adopted the German word.