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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>I would also like to preemptively apologise for my ignorance.
Ignorance isn’t a crime; wilfully ignoring the truth is. You’ve got nothing to be guilty of.
>What does it mean when people say there’s no proper translation from a non-English word to English?
They mean it’s sticky. There’s no “one-word” translation for it, meaning you have to kinda tip toe around, and describe the meaning from a 3rd person perspective.
It’s kind of a similar situation to “if you explain a joke, it’s not funny”. In unpacking the meaning of the word, it kinda loses any of the nuances that it originally had.
That said, “kummerspeck” seems like a bad example. I’d probably use the English word “Awkward” as an example. French, cannot translate this word well.
French can express the ideas awkward stands in for, but it typically involves one of 7 words, none of which fully encompass what it means to be ‘awkward’
Maladroit > Clumsy
Embarrassant > Uneasy/shameful
Gênant > Touchy (awk-waaard)
Délicat > Delicate
Mal dans sa peau > Insecure / low-self-esteme
Mal à l’aise > “Ill at ease”
Bizarre > Weird/odd
The French don’t really say “that’s awkward”, because they don’t really *distinguish* awkwardness in the same way. Any translation isn’t accurate
That there is not a word, usually you have to give a whole description to make people understand
In Norwegian we have the word “pålegg”, which directly translated would be “on lay”. It refers to any kind of meat, cheese, spread or whatever that you can put on your slice of bread.
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