One of the primary reasons for finding so many untranslatable words in the English language is the melting pot nature of the United States. Because of the nation’s history of blending different cultures and backgrounds, American English is truly a mixed language enhanced by contributions from numerous other languages.
Considering this, What makes a word untranslatable?
Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a lacuna, or lexical gap. The term arises when describing the difficulty of achieving the so-called perfect translation.
Also, What does it mean to say something untranslatable?
: unable to be translated : not translatable an untranslatable phrase a word untranslatable from German Those reflective undercurrents would seem to be untranslatable to the screen.— Mel Gussow.
Regarding this, Is there a language that Cannot be translated?
But there’s also Odia, the official language of the Odisha state in India, with 38 million speakers, which has no presence in Google Translate. And Oromo, a language spoken by some 34 million people, mostly in Ethiopia, which has just 772 articles in its Wikipedia.
How can we solve the problem of Untranslatability?
To resolve this issue, the translator is supposed to copy it in the target language text (transliteration), and then give some description for it as a footnote as we have just explained above. Another example for the case of cultural untranslatability is religious terms.
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What are the two types of Untranslatability?
Nevertheless, it must be mentioned that there are two types of untranslatability: linguistic and cultural. As for the former one, it occurs when two languages don’t share common linguistic expression so that the same meaning is retained.
Why are there untranslatable words?
Untranslatable words do exist. The reason is fairly obvious. Cultural groups have their own characteristics and idiosyncrasies. We humans have different habits and daily routines, our own specific sense of humor and ways of living in society that differ around the world.
What is cultural Untranslatability?
Cultural untranslatability refers to the translation difficulties that originate from the gap between the SL culture and the TL culture. This occurs specially in rendering cultural aspects of a language such as names of people, clothes, foods, and abstract cultural concepts and terms.
Why are some words untranslatable?
One of the primary reasons for finding so many untranslatable words in the English language is the melting pot nature of the United States. Because of the nation’s history of blending different cultures and backgrounds, American English is truly a mixed language enhanced by contributions from numerous other languages.
What are the two types of Untranslatability according to Catford?
J. C. Catford identifies two types of untransalatability – linguistic and cultural. Linguistic untranslatability occurs when there are no grammatical or syntactic equivalents in the TL.
What English words can’t be translated?
– Awkward. Awkward is the perfect word to describe that peculiarly British blend of embarrassment, discomfort and uncertainty that arises most often in social situations when someone has said something that they shouldn’t. …
– Jinx. …
– Shallow. …
– Insight. …
– Nice. …
– Put. …
– Off. …
– Bully.
What does catford say about Untranslatability?
Catford (1965) explains linguistic untranslatability as follows: “failure to find a TL equivalent is due entirely to deerences between the source language and the target language” (p. 98).
What languages can be translated?
Besides English, the next most used languages online are Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, French and German.
How do you overcome translation problems?
The only way of overcoming language structure challenges is by having a genuine grasp of the grammatical differences of both languages. With such knowledge, you can alter and rearrange words and phrases to capture the intended meaning in the target language.
What do you mean by Untranslatability?
Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a lacuna, or lexical gap.
How do you overcome Untranslatability?
To overcome CU, translators have used different strategies individually and in combination of them such as the methods of Paraphrase, Regular Borrowing, Sentence Embedded Annotated Borrowing, Converted Borrowing, Loan Blend, Literal Translation, Calque, Equivalence, and Compensation.
What is the hardest language to translate?
– Mandarin. Mandarin is a Chinese language which is considered as one of the hardest languages to translate. …
– Arabic. Arabic is a hard language to translate because of its vocabulary. …
– Hebrew. Hebrew is one of the most ancient languages of the World which is still spoken. …
– Korean.
Can all languages be translated?
Untranslatability is the property of text or speech for which no equivalent can be found when translated into another language. A text that is considered to be untranslatable is considered a lacuna, or lexical gap. … Meaning can virtually always be translated, if not always technically accurate.
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