Talk:Words hardest to translate

message: Hmmm. I have my doubts about how useful this list can be, but I'll see how it develops first. Darksun 14:46, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I hope this article could become a story-telling list with lots of short-story-like explainations. -- Toytoy 15:06, Sep 2, 2004 (UTC)
If shlimazl is hard to translate, what about shmegegge? Gzuckier 20:17, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: Well, I bet that's one part of the word what makes it hard to translate: it can mean both. --Farside 04:33, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Questions

message: *Doomo-Good bye, hello, very much
*Gambaru-Fight, do well, struggle hard
*saa, as in saa, shirimasen. 
yuri_koval 09:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's just that when playing a basketball game, I shout 'Gambatte', but it is a bit awkward to shout equivalent 'fight on', etc.. More like 'defence' or shoot. Some Spanish speakers(Peruvians) in Japan have made it into a Spanish word(Gambaro Gambara, Gambarimos, Gambareis Gambaran, etc..)--Jondel 23:17, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Japanese

message: I don't know if this Japanese word is so difficult to translate. It has multiple meanings. But when used in a sentence, it usually settles on a specific one. "Fight on!" "Word hard!" "Struggle!" "Tough it out!" To a translator, a 80% or 90% approximation is usually possible, I guess. And this word has been over-used over and over in everyday Japanese, it may have already lost some of its subtle meanings.
がん(gam)ば(ba)る(ru)【頑張る】
	
1.〔踏ん張る〕hold out, hang on
* 援軍が来るまでがんばった
** They held out [hung on] till reinforcements arrived.
* がんばれ!
** Stick with [to] it! / [collo.] Hang in there! / [before a test or a match] Good luck!
* 最後までがんばるぞ
** I'll stick it out!
* もっとがんばらないと進級できないよ
** If you don't work harder, you won't be able to move up to the next grade.
* 私服が入り口に頑張っていて中に入れなかった
** I could not get in because plainclothesmen were watching the door closely.
2. 〔主張する〕insist [on]; persist [in]
* 彼はうそをついた覚えはないと頑張った
** He insisted that he had not lied.
-- Toytoy 02:06, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)
:It's just that when playing a basketball game, I shout 'Gambatte', but it is a bit awkward to shout equivalent 'fight on', etc.. More like 'defence' or shoot. Some Spanish speakers(Peruvians) in Japan have made it into a Spanish word(Gambaro Gambara, Gambarimos, Gambareis Gambaran, etc..)--Jondel 23:17, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Gambaru

message: As a personnal experience, I've found "ballistic" when used metaphorically (to go ballistic at smone) to be extremely hard to translate into French.--Circeus 18:11, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  French 

message: (cur) (last) 22:29, 10 Oct 2004 Chameleon (All valuable content in this article is now available at Translation. The rest is either hopelessly arbitrary and POV or specifically about Today Translations, who are a non-notable company.)
:I don't understand, why this page is deleted without proper discussions. --Rrjanbiah 08:49, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: See my points above; the list is inherently POV, since no-one can study, measure or quatify the "hardness" of translation of individual words. Listing "hardest words to translate" is like listing "best movies" or "most beautiful countries". I agree there wasn't a clear consensus about deletion, but I'm quite sure the VfD process would've produced the same result. --Farside 10:39, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why deleted? 

message: I was just having a conversation with a Russian friend of mine.  English is his second language; he's pretty fluent, but has troubles with idioms and slang.  I used the term "space cadet" to describe somebody, and he had never heard the term before.  I couldn't think of a good way to translate it.  --RoySmith 01:46, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Space Cadet? 

message: Hans Wehr's Arabic-English Dictionary (4th ed.) doesn't mention the word specifically, but the root ّهم hamma shows a primary meaning 'to disquiet, make uneasy, fill with anxiety, distress, grieve (someone)', and its derivations include the meanings 'grave', 'important', 'anxious', 'heavy', and so on. The kind of sadness referred to here is probably an anxious type of worry. In psychiatry, depression and anxiety often go hand in hand.
Arabic word forms prefixed by ta-, such as this one (al- is the definite article 'the'), are generally nouns referring to the action or state of the verb itself. -- LudwigVan 06:33, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic ''altahmam'' 

message: Isn't a table easier to read than the list? I tried to make one myself, but I don't know how good it is... Jotomicron | (talk) 00:38, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Table the list?

message: :Taken from the old Cleanup entry…Archived by HopeSeekr of xMule (Talk) 15:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old Cleanup Archive 

message: Merge useful points with untranslatability, noting Translation#Translation_problems. This would be things like the difference between challenges of translating
# a word which requires expert/local knowledge which the target reader does not possess (eg translating "computer" to an Ancient Egyptian)
# a word which carries complex layers of cultural connotations, for which no single equivalent exists which conveys all of them precisely
# a word which can generally be translated adequately in most contexts, but requires an understanding of the context the word is used in, and a great deal of expertise in both languages to choose correctly from the wide range of consequent possibilities.
The company's list should be dumped. It's unnecessary, controversial, unhelpful, and dangerously close to advertising. Rd232 22:48, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: An excellent idea. I may only add that the list was compiled by their own translators, hence is far from  being authoritative and representative; and some choices rather show a low qualification of these folk than the translation difficulty. mikka (t) 00:12, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge with untranslatability 

message: With reference to "Another example for a tricky English construct would be: How would you ask a boy who has several brothers "which" (or which-th!) son of his parents he is, such that his reply would be something like: "I am the third son"? This is probably a straightforward construct in some other languages, such as Finnish and Tamil, for instance, which have an exact word for "which-th", e.g. Finnish mones."
The english usage "of what order".... Of what order are you are son to your father. Of what order is  Lincoln the president of America Doctor Bruno 20:03, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Try monennestako, asking from (the inside of) which-th. But, the point is, that trying to translate is produces extremely complicated and awkward constructs in English, not that translation would be logically impossible. --Vuo 00:29, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Order

message: There is a word in Bantu called "bilita mpatshi" which means, roughly, blissful dreams. They're like the opposite of nightmares.--D1l3mma (talk) 21:27, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bantu