The difficulty in translating some words depends on what language you are translating from and the one you are working into, because some languages lack linguistic equivalents for concepts that are foreign to their culture.

We now continue with the second part of our two-part post, a review of Nataly Kelly’s ten difficult-to-translate concepts taken from her new book, Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World, which she co-authored with Jost Zetzsche.

Here now are the remaining five words.

6. TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE (English into All Other Languages)

The Harry Potter books have been translated into at least seventy languages. A challenge for every Potter translator is how to render the name of “Tom Marvolo Riddle.” Spoiler: as an anagram for “I am Lord Voldemort,” the name conveys an essential clue to the identity of the story’s main villain.

While the translators of the nonalphabetic East Asian languages had to revert to explanatory notes, translators of other languages tried to outdo each other in their creative solutions.

One extremely clever solution is the French version, Tom Elvis Jedusor. Not only is this an anagram of “Je suis Voldemort” (“I am Voldemort”), but “Jedusor” is pronounced similarly to the French Jeu du sort (meaning “fate riddle”).

7. SAM I AM (English into Spanish)

Aida Marcuse, an experienced children’s author and translator of children’s books, was handpicked by an American publisher to translate Green Eggs and Ham into Spanish for the U.S. market.

Aida plunged into the translation but became stuck almost immediately, desperately trying to find a key to the rhythm of the text. In her despair, she called her adult daughter, who had listened to her mother read the book aloud to her as a child.

After a bit of reflection, Aida’s daughter shared a revelation: “Mom, the keyword is Sam, because it rhymes with ham. In Spanish we need a name that rhymes with jamón. How about Ramón?”

Thus Sam I am became Juan Ramón. With this cornerstone in place, it took Aida all of four hours to translate the rest of the book.

8. LÍTOST (Czech into English)

The Czech author Milan Kundera is known for being very particular about his translations. In fact, Kundera’s Book of Laughter and Forgetting questions the concept of translation itself:

“Litost is an untranslatable Czech word. Its first syllable, which is long and stressed, sounds like the wail of an abandoned dog. As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.”

Some describe it as a combination of grief, sympathy, remorse, and longing, but Kundera’s translators wisely followed the author’s instructions and left litost untranslated.

9. SAUDADE (Portuguese into English)

One of the most beautiful words in Portuguese is saudade, which refers to something loved and lost. The world famous Fado music, known for its mournful singing, is linked to saudade.

There is no exact word for the term in English, although some would liken it to a yearning or a longing for something that is no longer attainable—more intense than nostalgia. Others have called it the love that remains after someone (or something) is gone.

The word has been used to express the sadness of those who disappeared in shipwrecks as well as the longing for home the many Portuguese sailors experienced.

10. JESUS (English into Chinese)

Back in the early seventh century, a group of Christian missionaries began to translate religious texts into Chinese. Since they did not have a strong command of the Chinese language, they relied on Buddhist monks to help with the translation. The Buddhists translated the word God by using the Chinese term for “Buddha.”

The transcription of the term Jesus resulted in an even bigger problem. Due to the relative scarcity of syllables available in Chinese, it’s possible to use a multitude of different characters (each of which stands for the same-sounding syllable) to phonetically transcribe a single foreign word.

Because there are so many to choose from, a translator usually tries to pick characters with a descriptive or positive meaning. The word that the Buddhist translators chose for Jesus was yishu, which sounds similar, but the characters they chose meant “to move rats.”

So there you have it, ten words that are exceptionally difficult to translate. Of course there are certainly many more. So if you can you think of other words that are not easy to translate, do let us know by posting a comment on our blog.

By Alex Dupont
Marketing Communications Specialist
Language Translation Inc.

See Also

• The language translation of a single word may not be as easy as it seems
  Translation is the act of rewriting a document, changing it into another language.
• Ten Concepts That Are Surprisingly Difficult to Translate by Nataly Kelly
  To most people, the process of translation sounds easy. Just take a phrase and one language and convert it into another, just like online translation tools do, right?
• Found in Translation About the book
  Found in Translation About the book