Book review: Three Dictionaries of Untranslatable Words
I have been curious about untranslatable words for a while: the non-existent words in your own language which are in perfect use in another language. We even ran a section called Untranslatable Fridays on our Facebook page a few years ago and we interviewed Ella Frances Sanders on our blog, the author of Lost in Translation. What’s more, I raise my children bilingually in Polish and English, but we always use a Swedish word ‘fika’ for our afternoon snack. The word ‘fika’ just perfectly provides the meaning for our little afternoon gathering with snacks and drinks, so we decided to add it to our family dictionary.
When searching the subject of untranslatable words, I came across a few publications, including a new book by Ella Frances Sanders which was very exciting news. All three publications which I review below were a joy to read and gave me food for thought when it comes to languages, linguistics and the world in general. Perhaps they might be your travel reading companions for the coming summer months.
Wild Words by Kate Hodges
Wild Words might just be the perfect book to read in the countryside. I mostly read it when I was in Devon and enjoyed reading the book in nature. One day a bee sat on me and then on one of the book’s pages. Magical. This book is compact size, so it might be a perfect companion on a picnic to entertain your friends or children. I played a game with my family where I would read a word and show a picture and then ask my children which language this word might come from. Guessing was tricky, but we all had great fun playing.
In terms of the book’s content, it’s a beautiful read, both in terms of words chosen by Kate Hodges and illustrations by Yang Sio Maan. Among the words that resonated with me are: ‘gluggaveður’(Icelandic) meaning ‘window weather’, ‘soseol’ (Korean) meaning ‘first snow’, ‘meriggiare’ (Italian) meaning ‘mid-day relaxing break’, smultronställe’ (Swedish) meaning ‘special, idyllic or hidden place’ (literal meaning is ‘wild strawberry patch’), ‘rudeneja’ (Lithuanian) meaning ‘becoming autumnal’ and ‘friluftsliv’ (Norwegian) meaning ‘open-air living’. A way to add some humour into reading this book is that you can try to guess which language has more words for snow: the Eskimo-Aleut language or the Scots language?
They Have a Word for It, by Howard Rheingold
This lexicon of untranslatable words contains a very rich collection. The book was first published in 1988 and is divided into eleven chapters: Human Family Affairs, You Are What You Say, Defence of the Sexes, The Eye of the Beholder, Serious Business, States of Mind, Life Is But a Dream, Spiritual Pathwords, The Body Politic, Toolwords and Strange Memes.
In these chapters, each word is well-described, not only as definitions, but in the form of a short essay/thorough explanation. As a reader, I enjoyed the author’s sense of humour and his in-depth analysis of the untranslatable words. The only drawback is that the Polish words contain spelling mistakes and I’m not sure about the other words, so perhaps it might be worth researching the spelling of the words before using them.
With this lovely variety of untranslatable words, it’s a bit of a challenge to choose a few as examples, but let me try: ‘nyepi’ (Balinese) meaning the national day of silence, ‘salogok’ (Eskimo) meaning young black ice (with some reference to more words related to ice and snow) and ‘Schlimmbesserung’ (German) meaning a so-called improvement that makes things worse.
Words to Love a Planet written and illustrated by Ella Frances Sanders
This book gives you a deeper insight into untranslatable words and nature in general. I particularly enjoyed reading short introductions to each chapter, they felt personal, yet referring to some nature-related global issues, gently written yet quietly shouting the truths the readers may know about yet they somehow chose to ignore.
The book is divided into seven chapters: Seasons, Land, Time, Water, Weather, Home and Being. It contains words from many languages: from Finnish, Latin, Catalan, Galician, Icelandic, Georgian to Cornish, Scottish Gaelic, Shetland and Rugwangali, Yaqui, Malay, Tamil, Hopi, Ojibwemowin, Inuktitut among others. The rich collection of words and languages found a place for two Polish words ‘listopad’ meaning November and ‘pogodnie’ meaning pleasant weather, but can also describe an attitude of a person. With this rich variety of words and their fascinating meanings, I’ll choose a few more as examples: ‘uitwaaien’ (Dutch) meaning going outside in the windy weather to freshen one’s mind, 居場所I / ‘ibasho’ (Japanese) meaning a place where a person belongs / feels at home and ‘mysig’ (Swedish) meaning cosy, warm and comfortable (similar to the Danish word ‘hygge’).
During our recent BLS tutors’ meet-up, when we talked about Words to Love a Planet, Debbie, our Russian tutor suggested reading one untranslatable word a day and then reflecting on it and staying with it for this one day or longer and it might be one way of reading this book, even though I myself read it as any fiction or non-fiction (although I want to try this reflective way of reading the next time I return to this publication).
Kinga Macalla