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

It means that there isn’t a specific word that entails the entire meaning of a phrase. So for example in Spanish you can say “enchilado” which means “I have eaten something spicy and am feeling the effects of the spiciness.” So I can explain in English with a sentence but not a single word that means that entire sentence.