[Music]
G: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast
that's enthusiastic about linguistics!
I'm Gretchen McCulloch. L: And I'm Lauren
Gawne, and today we're talking about how
to translate untranslatable words. But
first, it's our Patreon anniversary! G: Yay!
L: And
we are super excited to revisit the
topic that we visited for our first
episode, which is swearing. Yayyy, rude
episode on Patreon! G: So our first Patreon
episode was all about the sounds of
swearing and swearing in different
languages, and this time we're talking
about the grammar of swearing, and we
already have reports that it made
somebody laugh out loud in public, so
maybe don't listen to it around
young children or in public, because you
might have to explain to them why you're
laughing so hard.
So you can go check that out at
patreon.com/lingthusiasm. L: We also,
conveniently for our anniversary,
unlocked a new Patreon goal, which we are
really excited about. This one is a goal
to commission some
Lingthusiasm-themed
art. G: Yes! So we're very excited to have
some exciting art and for you guys to
get to see concept sketches and where
things go from here! So stay tuned for
more exciting Lingthusiasm art news.
[Music]
[Music]
G: So, untranslatable words! Lauren, have
you
come across any untranslatable words
lately? L: It's because I came across, like,
three in the space of a day that I was
like, "We really have to talk about this
topic." Because it's a bit
of a linguist meme, or talking about
language meme, is this idea that there
are some words that just aren't
translatable or
meanings for which we don't have a
single word and maybe we should. So the
first is a Language Log post from Mark
Liberman. He was talking about how there
was a big, windy, wintry, weathery event
in Philadelphia that meant that there
were a lot of discarded umbrellas left
around, and he talked about how there's
no word for a dead umbrella. G: Isn't the
word for a dead umbrella just "dead
umbrella" or "broken umbrella"? L: Well...
G: I don't
know why this has to be so hard! L: We can
chat about it, but he
felt like it was something that needed a
word and a blog post. And the other one -- G:
Is it an
UNbrella? L: An unbrella. G: We need to write
in to Mark. L: Yep. We solved it! G: You have
your
umbrellas and then you have your unbrellas.
L: And the second blog post
about untranslatable words, or no word in
a language, was from my favourite
gynaecologist, Dr. Jennifer Gunter, who has
a really fabulous blog, and she she was
talking about -- I'll just read the quote.
"I
believe there is no word in any language
to describe that unique experience
that's simultaneously running out of
both pads (or tampons) and toilet paper
when you're sitting on the toilet and in
immediate need of both." G: This is a
terrible situation, but I think she's
described it! I don't know, like, am I
the untranslatable word sceptic here? But
I think she's, you know, just put
several words together and it did a
pretty good job of describing this
relatable experience. L: But there's no
single word that encapsulates -- I mean,
there are plenty of single words and
most of them are more appropriate for a
Patreon episode than this episode -- but
none that specifically encapsulates that
meaning. G: Yeah, I mean, so this is a thing
that I've been thinking about in terms
of
what I've called "the schadenfreude
effect," which is, you know when you learn
the schadenfreude and you're like,
"Wow! The Germans! They really do have a
word for everything, like taking pleasure
in someone else's misfortune! It's not
just me who's uniquely terrible at doing
this sometimes! Other people do this
too!
Whoa, mind blown!" And the thing that I
think makes us resonate with these lists
of untranslatable words or ideas that
certain concepts are untranslatable or
there should be a word for something is
that words are way of packaging
our experiences, and if we have a word
for something, then we know that someone
else has thought of packaging that
particular experience before. And so
saying, "Oh, is there a word for this?"
is also kind of trying to reach for
"haven't other people also had this
common experience" or "isn't this
something else that other people have
also felt." L: I really like that you've
coined the term "schadenfreude effect"
to really encapsulate the meaning of
feeling pleased that you found a word
that neatly translates a concept that
you thought didn't have an elegant word
for it.
G: Yeah, it's kind of when you
encounter a word that describes
something you're already familiar with.
And I came up with it actually because
there's this paper that I really like
about people learning words and how best
to teach people new concepts and new
vocabulary. And so they did this study,
and I think was a biology class or an
economics class, I don't remember, an
intro class at a university somewhere,
and some of the students got a
reading, kind of your standard
textbook reading that is, like, you know,
"Mitosis is blah blah blah..." and
"Supply and demand is blah blah blah" --
I don't remember whether this was
biology or economics, so... L: The biology/economics
textbook. G: In the highly in-demand
Intro Bio/Econ course! So anyway,
they got your kind of standard reading
that had a bunch of terms with
their definitions, and then the other
people got a different reading which was
a version where you had all the concepts
explained to you, saying, "There is a
concept in biology where cells
divide blah blah blah" or in economics
where people buy things at different
rates. And then for those students, they
got to class and they got a brief list
of vocabulary words that said, "These
concepts that you
were exposed to in the reading, here are the
words for them." And then they did a
post-test on how well the students did
in learning these concepts, and they found
that the students that had been exposed
to the concept before the jargon did
better than the students that were
exposed to the jargon and the concept at
the same time or even the jargon first.
L: So it's not just a matter of smashing
words into your brain. G: Yeah, and it's -- you
know, when you come across a
word like "schadenfreude" and you're like,
"Wow, this is so satisfying to learn this,"
the reason it's satisfying to learn the
word "schadenfreude" is because you're
already familiar with the feeling. L: Right.
G: And it's less satisfying to learn a word
like, I don't know, "mitosis" or something
because you're not familiar with this
concept before you learn the word, so
you're having to learn the word and the
concept at the same time.
L: I guess it's why -- and this is gonna
date
this podcast horrifically -- why "hygge"
has
resonated so much with people in the
last 18 months. It's just been like
a hygge bonanza of like -- G: Mm-hmm!
L: -- Danish/Scandinavian cosy, thoughtful,
living books. G: Yeah, and it's all about
this, like, okay here's this concept that
we'd like to be able to reach for, or
this idea that we'd like to be able to
articulate better, like, doesn't
everyone want more cosiness in their
lives? And it comes with a lot
of cultural stuff, but it's
around the idea of people
wanting more cosiness, or more of
whatever it is that thing that the Danes
have. I think this is the same reason why
words like "tsundoku" often show up on
untranslatable words lists as well. So
this is the Japanese word for the pile
of books that you haven't gotten around
to reading yet. L: What's wrong with "my pile
of unread books"? G: Yeah, I mean, I know
a lot
of people who talk about their "TBR pile,"
which is their "to be read" pile, or their
reading list? L: Mmm. G: And as far as I can
tell
they're, I don't know, used pretty similarly
to "tsundoku"! But
we're familiar with the idea of "of
course you have this pile of books you
haven't gotten around to reading yet."
L: Yep. G: And, oh isn't it convenient
that there's this convenient package
for this thing that you either are
intimately familiar with, or that you
would like to be more familiar with, as
in the case with "hygge." L: It's interesting
how
sometimes these words will enter into
English.
So, like, schadenfreude I think is -- I
mean, you can tell from my very
Australianising of it, like it's a
comfortable piece of my vocabulary, I can
use it actively in a sentence, and I feel
really comfortable with it. But, like, I
think "hygge" is kind of crossing into
that at the moment? I don't -- I think it's
too faddy, personally. G: Yeah, I think it
may
still be too much of a fad at the moment,
but it may be crossing over.
I heard someone saying "tsundoku" in
a sentence in English, but she was
someone who'd lived in Japan for a while,
so I don't think she was using
it Anglicised? So I don't know which ones
of these are crossing over. L: Yep.
G: But one of the things that I always
think about what I think about these
lists of "oh, here's a bunch of words
that are untranslatable," is first of all,
well, here is this convenient column B
where someone just provided a bunch of
nice translations for them. So how
untranslatable are they, really? And also
that if you look at a language just
through the lens of its lexicon, you can
end up with some really weird
conclusions. L: Yeah. G: And my favourite
example
of this is French doesn't have a word
for "please." Therefore, obviously, the
French, they must be very impolite, maybe.
But what they do have is a four-word
phrase, "s'il vous plait," which comes in
another form which is "s'il te plait," which
both mean effectively "please." And in fact
they come in formal and informal
versions, this phrase that means
effectively "please." And so, sure, if we
look at the lexicon of French, the
individual, atomisable words with
spaces in between them, like, "Oh dang,
there's no equivalent for please! Like
how do you even be polite in this
language?" But if you look at it even just
one step further in subtlety, of course
there are lots of ways to be polite in
this language! And so, you know, seeing a
language just through the lens of its
lexicon -- on the one hand it gets us some
of these interesting packages, but on the
other hand it misses out on a whole lot
of what a language actually is if all
we're doing is looking at the lists of
words and their translations. L: It reminds
me of the "there's no way to say 'yes' and
'no' in Mandarin" meme? G: Mm-hmm. L: That
there isn't just a convenient word like
"yes" we see that you can use to answer an
affirmative, and no equivalent of "no"
that you can just use to say no to a
question that someone asks. And it's
because you say -- if, you know, someone
says,
"Do you
want this?" you use the equivalent of "want"
or
"don't want." G: Oh, Gaelic does this, too.
L: Yeah! So just because you can't find "yes"
or "no" in a simple word list doesn't mean
you're unable to say it. G: Like, "Whoa you
can't do negation or affirmative in
these languages!" Clearly the
speakers are capable of agreeing and
disagreeing with things. L: "Yes and no are
untranslatable!" And it's just like, oh, they
have some way of expressing affirmative
and negative. Life is going on. G: Yeah! But
something that interests me is the
subtler domains where things are
actually harder to translate as well. And
one of the big areas for me for that is
poetry, because what makes a poem
essentially is that you have a
relationship with form and meaning that
is aesthetically pleasing. L: And
contextually dependent. G: And different
languages do have different
relationships between form and meaning.
So to take a very simple example, a pair
of words that rhyme in English don't
necessarily rhyme in another language
you might be trying to translate a poem
to. So if you have something like "roses
are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet,
and I love you" the kind of classic, four-line, parodisable poem in English -- L: All
versions of that poem are said in deep,
deep earnest, Gretchen. It's the most moving
piece of poetry. G: So moving. Why wasn't
this our Valentine's Day episode? Um, so you
have something like
this, but "blue" and "you" rhyme in English,
and they don't rhyme in many other
languages. There's no particular reason
why they have to rhyme, it's just they
happen to in English and so they make
good subjects for poems, and that's why
we don't say "violets are purple" because
"purple" doesn't rhyme with "you." And so
when you try to translate that in
another language, either you've got to be
unfaithful to the meaning and use a
different pair of words that do rhyme, or
you've got to be unfaithful to the rhyme
and then not reproduce the aesthetic
experience of getting the poem. And so
because there's this inherent asymmetry,
because different languages
have different words -- shockingly! -- it's
really hard to translate things that
rely on both the form and the meaning
simultaneously. L: I remember learning to
read Old English poetry, and I
just couldn't get my head around it -- it
involves alliteration, they weren't really
big into rhyming. G: Mm! L: And I was just
like,
"I don't have a feeling for this
being good." You know, my Old English
teacher would just be like, "Yeah, this is
such a
great poem, you can feel the rhythm!" and
I'm just like, "Oh, but there's no rhyming..."
G: Everything's gotta rhyme. L: Yeah, I don't
know how to evaluate this. G: I remember I
tried to read
Hamlet in French once because, you know,
whatever. L: How did that go? G: Well, what
was
really interesting for me is, you know,
the thing about Hamlet, and Shakespeare
in general, is that Shakespeare is all in
iambic pentameter, right? L: Mm-hmm. G: And
so
you have your, like, duh-DUH beat, your iamb,
with weak-strong -- L: Yeah, even
my "mm-hmm" was in iambic pentameter, I
was really impressed. Mm-hmm. G: Mm-hmm! There
you go. And
you have five of those per line, but in
French you can't do that, because French
doesn't have word-level stress the way
English does. L: Right, yeah. G: And I'm sure
we'll probably do, at some point, a full
stress episode, but in French you just
only ever stress the thing that's at the
end of the whole sentence or phrase.
That's it, that's all you do, you
have to do it that way. L: Okay. Yup. G: And
so you
can't divide a poem into beats
like that, because French doesn't do
beats that way. And so what French poetry
has instead that's, like, stylistically
similar to iambic pentameter is
something called the alexandrine, which
is twelve syllables per line. So iambic
pentameter gives you ten syllables
per line, the alexandrine gives you twelve,
which is pretty similar, and so this
translation of Hamlet was all written in
alexandrines with the twelve syllables
per line. L: So they get an extra two
syllables per line. G: Yeah! L: The whole
thing goes for like
an extra 20% of time. G: But it often
takes more syllables to say the same
thing in French anyway. L: Oh, okay. G: Because
French is
kind of spacious like that. L: Yep. G: So,
I think it kind of balanced out. But
yeah, you just got this very
different -- L: And was it in modern French
or
ye olde French? G: I... don't remember. I
think
it was in pretty modern French, though, it
didn't feel super ye olde. L: Right. G: But
I also don't necessarily know what
ye olde French would sound like, you know?
L: Fair enough!
Because sometimes, like, translating
across time -- you know, we talk about
translating between cultures and what I
think is,
dare I say, a bit of fetishisation of,
like, Scandinavian and Japanese social
life that we overextend, one way of kind
of borrowing their words that translate
interestingly. And we forget that
translating from older texts, like
translating from Shakespeare, or going
back further to something like Beowulf,
there's actually a lot that's not easily
translated between those. G: Yeah, and when
you're translating something like -- you
know, Shakespeare's stuff was written in
current English to the original audience
he was writing to, he wasn't writing in
fakie olde English, and so do you try to
be faithful to that for the modern
reader, or do you try to reproduce
the experience of the modern reader in
experiencing that as something old?
Something I've been really fascinated
about recently has been the Emily Wilson
translation of The Odyssey. L: Mmm! G: Oh,
it's so cool. I follow her
on Twitter now, it's really great.
So she is heralded as the first woman to
translate The Odyssey into English, which
is kind of shocking that we've gotten
this far and it took that long. L: I'd have
to say most of the versions that I have
ever come across have been quite dusty,
dry, like they feel like they were
written at the time of Homer, even though
they're in English.
G: Well, not quite Homer, but like this
kind of 1800s feel. L: Yep. G: And that's
the thing,
like even the ones that were written
in, like, I don't know, the 1950s, often have
this
fake ye olde thing because, like, oh, well,
Homer is a classic and so you need to
make him sound olde. L: So what's Emily
Wilson done? G: And so Wilson doesn't do
that. She's not doing ye olde, and her
first line that she translates the poem
as is, "Tell me about a complicated man,"
which is referring to Odysseus. L: Oh, that
could be a text that I sent someone.
G: That's an Avril Lavigne song! Like, "Odysseus,
why did
you have to go make things so
complicated? Right now I'm just unweaving
this loom and man I really hate it!" You
know, like, that's a very
real translation! But she also -- and this
is something that the other translators
also don't do -- she also translates the
whole epic poem in
verse, and she does all of her lines in
iambic pentameter. L: Right. G: And the other
translators tend to render it in
prose, or in, like, shortened lines,
but without paying attention to that
beat in the same sort of way. L: Yeah. G:
And so
I'm also really holding out for the
audiobook version of this translation of
The Odyssey, because I want to hear it
read. It was originally an oral piece of a
literature, and I really want to hear
someone render it to me in that sort of
way. L: Mm, that would be fun.
G: Yeah! I'm excited. It's one of my
post-book projects, I'm gonna dive into
that pretty deeply, I think. L: Awesome. G:
Yeah!
So untranslatability, when it comes
to things like how do you
render -- and I think the Greek
word that she's trying to render with
"complicated" is "polytropos"? I'm probably
getting that wrong. But it means, like,
"many-turning"? L: Mm-hmm. G: "Poly" meaning
"many" and
"tropos" is "turning," like a heliotrope
is a flower that turns towards the sun.
L: Yep. G: But "many-turned" is not really
an
idiom in English. And so different
translators try to render that idiom in
different sorts of ways that both try to
make it legible for the reader and also
try to make it sound somewhat idiomatic
and give you a sense of the
feeling of the source text, in a short
amount of space.
L: I mean, idioms are super difficult
because they're often multiple words, or if
it's just one word, alluding to the whole
idiom. Like, idioms already come as
complicated sets of words that have a
specific meaning that you can't just go,
like, "word + word." You know, "looking a
gift horse in the mouth," you can't say
"look + horse + gift + mouth
= ..." G: That's a nice Greek idiom, Lauren!
L: Yeah,
I'm just keeping on-theme. You have to know
about how gifts work and how horses work --
and actually I don't actually know how
horses' mouths work, I just know that
you want to make sure they're healthy
and that's apparently the mouth! G: Yeah,
I
remember I was reading a book that I'd --
when I was practising French I
was reading stuff in French I'd already
read in English. L: Yeah. G: And the English
passage of this book had said something
like "something something something was
carrying coal to Newcastle," which, I've
never been to Newcastle, but I know that
this is an idiom for, you know, Newcastle
is a big producer of coal and so why would
you bring coal to Newcastle, Newcastle
already has
the coals. L: Yeah. Was it "taking croissants
to Paris"? G: I wish it was! They just said
something like "it was just a drop of
water in the ocean". L: Taking mustard to
Dijon. G: I don't think those are idioms in
French the same way that "coals to
Newcastle" is an idiom in English, right?
So that would be kind of bringing you
out by saying, "Oh, what what is this weird
idiom that they have?" So instead they had
just "is a drop of water in the ocean,"
which is kind of idiomatic,
but is also something you could
interpret at a very literal level and it
doesn't particularly require context for
the idiom. L: Yeah. G: Because also the
book wasn't supposed to be set in France,
so it'd be weird to have a very French-y idiom.
L: Uh-huh.
So, we can have this kind of translatability
complication over time in
English, but we could also have it over
space because English is a language that
is spoken in many places, and many places
have their own words that have their own
specific meaning. G: Yeah, I really do like
adding to those "untranslatable" lists,
like, here's this very specific
meaning that this Japanese pile of books
brings to you. English has a specific
verb for "to deceive someone into
watching a video of Rick Astley's 'Never
Gonna Give You Up.'" L: Hey, wait! We do!
G: What does
it say about the English speakers that
we have the verb "to rickroll." L: Oh my gosh.
It's such a profound reflection on what
it means to be an English speaker on the
internet that we have created the word
rickroll. G: I know, right? L: I never thought
about it
like that before, it's really fun to flip
this trope around!
G: Yeah! You know, like, the English speakers
--
like, it's gonna be on a French word list
somewhere and be like, "Look at those
English speakers, look what they've
done!" L: Oh, that one's gonna date really
badly as well. G: Nah, rickroll's a classic.
And there's different words in Canadian
English and Australian English that
sometimes have different connotations.
L: And since we bump into this occasionally,
I thought we would do a mini
quiz round! G: Okay! Are you gonna quiz me?
L: I'm gonna quiz you. I have some words
here that have very specific meanings in
Australian English. G: Mm-hmm. L: And I want
you
to have a go at what you think they mean.
G: Okay. L: The first word is "bogan."
G: I'm familiar with "bogan," but I don't
know if
I could actually define it? Is
it kind of like a hick, but in Australia?
Or like a chav, but in Australia? L: I like
that you're going for definition by
triangulation. G: Yeeeah... like, it's kind
of more like working-class, salt-of-the-earth,
but also the people that
politicians kind of try to make up to?
L: Yeah, that's actually -- you did pretty
good
there. That's good. G: Yay! L: But you can
identify them from the particular sports
that they're interested in,
like the footy, like the cricket,
something something outdoors, something
something wearing flannel. G: Okay. L: It's
kind
of a set of meaning that goes together
to define -- G: I mean, in Canada they like
the
hockey, so I think I may somewhat
understand this demographic. L: Yeah. The
next word is "mateship." G: So, because I
know that you say -- people say "mate" in
Australian English to be like, "G'day, mate,"
or like, "What are you doing mate, that
was a bad idea." So mateship is like the
quality of having mates or like the
relationship that you have with your
mates? Or... this kind of thing? L: Uh, yeah!
I mean,
that is great, you've just kind of said
the meaning of both of those words at
the same time. Good start! G: Is there something
else I should be adding? L: It's something
to do with the ineffable quality of
reciprocal support. It's tied in a lot
with the idea of community -- not gonna lie,
it has a kind of Anglo vibe. It's -- G: Oh
my god,
it's Australian hygge. L: It's Australian
political dog-whistling to like -- G: Ohhh.
L: -- you
know, the way things should be, i.e. back
when Australia was quite Anglo.
(It never really was, but that's another
point.) Or this kind of idea of
Australians as like battlers forged
through hardship and adversity and are
now
somehow all kind of closely knit for
that. Is my kind of definition of
mateship. G: Okay. Yeah, I definitely don't
have the political context there. L: It
doesn't stir your soul? That's what
it's meant to evoke. G: It just...
ships my mates, mate! L: The final one is
"early mark." G: I have no idea. L: Have a
guess,
just make up... G: A... like, something that...
like, when you're like "on your marks, get
set, go" so it's like the early... first
thing you do? L: Mmm... no. G: I told you
I didn't know! L: This one is not even -- like,
so this is not a word that I have in my
active vocabulary. G: Okay. L: And it shows
that
like even in a country like Australia,
which has a really quite homogeneous use
of language across Australia, given how
big it is, this is from New South
Wales and Queensland? G: Okay. L: And
an
"early mark" means you get to leave school
or work early. G: Ahhh!
L: I have no idea why. New South Wales never
really explained it to me. G: I have a word
for that, but I don't remember what it is.
L: Is it "leaving work early"? G: Yeah, okay.
No, no,
there's like an idiom to it, and
I'm sure my high school self is
reaching through time and being like "how
did you forget this." L: It was very
important to you. G: Yeah, it was really
important to me for 13 years, and now I can't
remember. I can remember the concept, but
not the term. L: Well, there you have --
it's an untranslatable word for you,
Gretchen! It's a concept you're very
familiar with and you've never had -- G:
No, it's a schadenfreude thing! L: It's the
schadenfreude effect from English to English.
G: Okay, can
I give you a Canadian one? L: Sure. G: So,
are
you familiar with the Canadianism "toque"?
L: I am, but I feel like I'm not gonna know
where to draw the boundary on it. G: Okay,
well, try. L: So, I know it's a hat. G: Mm-hmm.
L: Umm... yay
for having Canadian rellos.
G: "Relatives" for the non-Australians.
L: Thanks for translating for me! G:
Welcome! L: Um, it's a
hat, but it's like a hat you wear in
the cold. G: Mm-hmm. L: Like, I'm gonna translate
it
into my English and say it's a beanie,
which is like a knitted,
or like thick, woollen hat that doesn't
have a brim or anything, it's just like
an egg-warmer for your head. G: Yeah,
Americans do call it "beanie," so I wasn't
sure if you'd have beanie as a term,
because it's like kind of warm to wear
beanies in Australia. So yeah, people call
it a beanie, I have a beanie as something
very different.
L: What's a beanie, then, for you? G: A beanie
is
one of those, like, round caps that
has like a spinny thing on top? That they
wore in like the '20s or something? L: Ahhhh.
No. Gee, that's so confusing. How do we
even talk to each other? Sometimes it's a
complete mystery to me. G: I know. L: It's
going to be
very difficult if I ever come and visit
you in the cold. "Don't come here with a
beanie, you need to bring a toque." G: I may
own a few toques, but I do not own any hats
with little spinny things on top, and I
do not aspire to. L: Ah, well. So, even when
we speak
the same language, we still kind of reach
these moments of translation where we
have to hopefully figure out that we're
not talking about the same beanie. G: Yeah.
I
know, personally, I think that my favourite
really difficult word in English to
translate is "the." L: That's not gonna
look nice on any lists, Gretchen. G: But it's
so difficult! Because, you know, some
languages don't have articles like "the"
and "a" and "an" at all!
Russian doesn't have them,
Chinese doesn't have them I don't think,
and there's a whole bunch of
languages that don't have this at all,
and so trying to translate into those
languages is really hard, and for
speakers of those languages, trying to
learn English and being like, "Should I be
using the 'the'? But how do you know?" And
then there's a bunch of languages that
have, like, several of them! L: Yeah. G: And
then
even languages which have what is
ostensibly still a definite article
don't use them in the same sorts
of ways. L: Yeah. G: So in English, if I want
to
say "I go for a walk on Mondays," I
don't put the "the" on Monday. But in
French, if I want to say "I go for a walk
on Mondays," then I have to say "le lundi,"
not just "lundi." L: Go for a walk on the
Mondays. G: Go for a walk the
Monday. Singular. L: Okay. The Monday. G:
Yeah, so
it's like, even in languages that
ostensibly have things that map to this
category, figuring out how to use them
slightly differently depending on the
language is a rich and difficult area of
of investigation. L: So, we've established
that it's not untranslatability, it's
unable to translate into a single
convenient word. And it's not
untranslatability because it
happens across Englishes, too... G: Mm-hmm.
L: So
what is happening here? G: I think it's
about -- there's two kinds
of meaning that come with a word. L: Mm-hmm.
G: There's the kind of one-sentence,
easy-to-describe, dictionary
sort of meaning. L: Yeah. Which is what we
often think of as meaning. G: Yeah. And
then there's all of the kind of
surrounding context: the social context,
and when you learned a word, and what it
means to you, and these kinds of things.
You know, I was coming across in one of
these lists a word about, I think it was a
Swedish type of coffee break. L: Fika! G:
Fika! L: It's a good one. G: And they
were saying, "Well in the Swedish coffee break
you're not allowed to talk
about work, and you must only talk about
things that are not related to work." L: Uh-huh.
G: And
I don't necessarily think that it is an
intrinsic property of "fika" as "fika"
specifically. I think this is a Swedish
property of coffee breaks. L: Right.
G: Like, I know what a coffee break is.
L: So it's conflating the coffee break and
the -- oh, I
always think, 'cause with fika it's
about having coffee and food, I
think of it as, like, "let's do coffee"? You
know, the act of doing
coffee. G: Yeah. L: That's what I think of
fika as. G: Let's get coffee, or let's
do coffee. L: Yeah. G: Not just like you're
sitting by yourself at your desk having
sad desk coffee.
L: That is definitely not fika. I know that,
and I'm not Swedish. G: But you
know, the cultural things are like what
you do at a coffee break, or, you know, if
you talk about different -- I don't know,
to
go back to the school example, different
recess traditions, or different school
break traditions, like do you go out and
play in the playground, or do you stay
inside because it's very cold in Canada
in the wintertime sometimes and they wouldn't
let us outside, even with
our toques. L: So, now that we have the
concepts of these two forms of meaning,
do you want the jargon? G: Yes, I'd like the
jargon. L: Okay.
So the specific, to-the-point
meaning -- dictionary meaning, more or less
-- is "denotation." Which I always remember
because denotation and dictionary
start with the same letter. G: Mm! L: And
then
connotation is all the context to the
meaning. (Do you see what I did there?) G:
Ah, good. L: So I'm gonna explain
denotation and connotation using sandwiches.
G: Okay. L: And of course we pulled sandwiches
apart -- not literally, just semantically
--
in a Patreon episode. But I want to
come back to sandwiches and talk about a
historical anecdote in my family that
kind of explains where denotation and
connotation are in tension.
So as I've mentioned, my grandmother is
an English second language speaker. G: Mm-hmm.
L: I've
mentioned it on the show before. She's a
Polish and German native speaker, came to
Australia, had to learn not only English,
but also raising a family of very
Anglo-educated children. So, my
grandfather's English, they went to
school in English, and they wanted to
kind of fit in with the other kids. And
so the denotation of a sandwich is very
simple: it's two pieces of bread with
filling between it. G: Yep. L: And my
grandmother would send my mum and her
siblings to school with sandwiches, but
where my grandmother fell down was on the
connotation of a sandwich, because my
grandmother took the "two pieces of bread
with some kind of tasty filling" quite
liberally. G: Uh-oh! L: There are stories
of her sending my mum
to school with butter and peanuts?
Because she couldn't get the hang that
peanut butter was a specific thing?
Or sending them to school with -- and I've
never tried this, personally -- but like
chocolate biscuits in bread. G: That's
very interesting! L: And so this is
completely violating the idea of what a
sandwich -- what its connotation is. But
she's still meeting the denotation of it.
G: Yeah, I mean, I think in our sandwich
episode she's passing the
sandwich test with flying colours!
L: She's doing better than a burrito! G: Yeah!
L: Or a pierogi.
G: Yeah, or a pizza or whatever. Like, she's
got the the two pieces of bread,
which is pretty key, and you could make a
chocolate chip cookie sandwich... L: And so
when we have these ideas of
untranslatable words, we're trying to
pull all the connotation along with the
denotation. I mean, sometimes it's just
denotation? G: Yeah. L: And the denotation
that
it has cuts the world in a particular
way our language doesn't, and that would be
nice to have. But often we're trying to
drag a lot of the connotation along as
well, and I think that's why "hygge" feels
like such a complicated thing to bring
into English, because we could just say
it means cosiness, and we've kind of hit
the denotation pretty well. G: Yeah. L: But
we
want to bring alllll of the Scandinavian
knitwear, candles, prettiness in
along with it. G: Yeah. And it's kind of
aspirational, like, this is how it
could be. There's a quote from Dinosaur
Comics that I really like that expresses
this. So they're talking about
meanings of words and what's the
opposite of various things, and T-Rex
is getting more and more frustrated and
says, "Language is hard!" And the other
character says, "No, life is hard. Language
is just how we talk about it."
L: Oh, that's so true. And it does -- these
connotations make it really hard, they
make it hard especially for machine
translation, because machines can't weigh
up all the different connotations of
different words in a way that a
translator can. And that's part of the
skill of translation, is knowing what
words to use that have the same
connotations. G: Mm-hmm. L: You know, if you're
translating a scene about someone at a
market, then the word "cheap" as
opposed to "inexpensive" --
something that's cheap has this
connotation of inferior quality compared
to using the word inexpensive. G: Yeah! Or
"a
good deal," you know, they could be the same
thing, like a "bargain." L: Oh, yeah! Suddenly
that's not only like -- it's like good cheap.
G: "Wow, that's good cheap!" And, you know,
"bad cheap,"
or "inexpensive," there's all these
different levels there and -- L: But words
are
connotation magnets. I mean, it's why we
need euphemisms all the time, because
as soon as we start using a word
in a particular context, it just amasses
all these connotations and they become
either pejorative and negative and
that's how slurs kind of get cycled
through, which is not great, or they kind
of make all these other cultural
inferences. G: Yeah, and I think that one
of
the things that talking about words as
"untranslatable," even though it
can be satisfying to say, "Oh wow, here's
these new concepts!" or "Here's the
thing that I hadn't thought about in
this way before," in some respect, every
word is untranslatable and yet we
managed to learn them all anyway. L: Yeah.
G: How do we learn any new word if no word
has an exact equivalent somewhere? Well,
you know, we live a life and we
figure it out! And in many cases,
the word side of translation is very
easy.
It's the grammar side and the aesthetic
side that's a lot harder. L: And all those
connotations. I know when I learnt Nepali,
I had to keep track of three different
formality levels, which, like, I know how
to be polite to different people to
different extents in English, but
suddenly I had to do it in another
language and in the grammar, and I
remember just knowing who to use which
level of formality with was a whole set
of translation that I took a long time
to really feel comfortable with, so I
would definitely agree that the kind of
grammatical encoding of things adds a
translation complication that can be
quite hard to master. G: Yeah, and yet you
don't
see different forms of "you" in
"difficult to translate" lists, even though
maybe they should be there. L: We're gonna
start our own very exciting list. G: Let's
make
a "difficult to translate for linguists" list!
I'd be down for this!
[Music]
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[Music]
