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.
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You may have heard of “Aloha” as the Hawaiian word for “hello”, maybe even as both hello and goodbye- and it is used that way. Direct translation of ‘Aloha’ is the presence (alo) of breath (ha). But it also means care, and respect, and a general good attitude. You can have aloha toward a person- to show a tourist aloha when they are lost- and toward the land- aloha aina- to love and protect the land.
Words are sounds meant to convey a concept and concepts are cultural. Direct translations don’t provide the cultural context needed to understand why a specific word is used in some situations but not others.
In English we have one first person singular subject pronoun “I” as in “I like cookies.” or “I went shopping.”
Japanese has multiple. Like close to 20. Some are archaic and rarely used. Others are used only in certain situations, but even in day to day life you will encounter multiple (watashi, boku, ore, uchi, atashi, etc.). They have different levels of familiarity and formality. Some are used more/exclusively by males or females, etc. Regardless, there is no ONE way to translate them to English. You’re losing some context no matter what by going to just “I”. Sometimes that context isn’t important. But when it is you have to add additional explanation, and even then there are subtleties that might get lost. And thats a pretty simple example of a commonly used word that in English we don’t think much about. Imagine for more complex words or grammar points like verbs.
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.
“Kummerspeck” is a single word, and there is no single word in English that means the same thing, so we explain it by breaking down the word “kummer” means “grief or sorrow” and “speck” means “a layer of fat, or bacon, or adipose”; therefore it means “sorrow adipose”, or “grief bacon”. That’s still not clear with explanation: “it’s excess body fat that accumulates when somebody overeats in response to stress”. Yeah, we don’t have a word for that, and while we acknowledge that happens, we haven’t really thought of that as a specific thing that needs its own name.
There are lots of times cultures have developed ideas and concepts that don’t appear in some other culture. It’s particularly true of cuisine, or religion. We don’t have translation for certain things, so instead we replace the word with an explanation so that we can have understanding.
My wife is Danish, so you hear “hyggelig” a lot. A lot of places will tell you that means “cozy”. That’s pretty close, but a sweater or slippers can be cozy in English because “cozy” means physical warmth and comfort, but “hyggelig” specifically refers to the the shared feeling of closeness that comes from spending quiet time together sharing warmth and companionship – it’s something shared by people, not a sensation from an article of clothing. We don’t really have a word for that, so “cozy” is what we use instead, but it doesn’t communicate the same idea.
Sometimes it means that there isn’t really a definition for the word. In Japanese class I was always told that “moshi Moshi” didn’t really have a meaning, it was just what you said when you answered the phone; most closely translated to “hello” but it doesn’t mean “hello” because you only use it on the telephone. Just my experience from taking Japanese in college about 11 years ago, so times may have changed.
Schadenfreude means “happiness at the misfortune of others.” There’s no English word that directly means that exact thing, hence the needed explanation.
It often comes from a place that uses it often (due to culture).
In Indonesian, there’s a word “titip” which means for person A (the person you’re talking to) to give to person B. So let’s say you need to give something to Brad but too busy to see him. But you’re gonna see Anna today and you know that Anna is going to see Brad tomorrow. So you ask Anna to give to Brad the stuff you want to give, as a middleman.
In Indo, it’s one just succinct word. And it makes sense because the culture requires to use it a lot. So it’s better to have one word rather than having to explain it all the time.
The feature is seldomly used in America, so there’s no word for it. It makes sense, cause why would there be a word for something that people don’t often use.
Every language has its own words, phrases, idioms, expressions, or whatever that don’t translate as well or simply across languages. For example, in English, we say “bullshit” to describe something that is untrue or false. If I were to literally translate that directly to say Chinese, for example, it wouldn’t make sense (牛大便), I’d just be saying literally “bull excrement.” Just reverse this situation, and you’d get the idea.
Not to mention, “bullshit” can mean different things depending on the context. If I read a fake news article and say, “This is bullshit,” it’s different from when I’m dying repeatedly in a video game or whatever and exclaim in frustration, “This level is bullshit!”
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.
If I’m understanding your question right, my easiest way is to think of colors. Let’s say we have red, green and blue. We have a basic idea of what the colors are, and we can get more specific with other colors like purple, orange, etc.
Now, let’s say we have a very specific shade between red and purple. We’d call it “maroon.” However, what if a culture had a name for a shade between red and maroon? Well, there’s no direct english translation (actually there might be but not one I know off the top of my head lol), so to explain it, someone would say “a color between red and maroon”
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