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On the television the other day, there were some people talking about how the
word 「しっとり」 applied to food can't be translated exactly into other languages.
It seems that 「しっとり」 could be translated into "moist" when talking about a
cake for example, we say a cake is "moist". Are the TV people right that
「しっとり」 is untranslatable?
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2020-02-09T03:55:32.630
74337
2020-02-10T12:55:04.910
2020-02-09T14:11:24.740
34735
question
translation onomatopoeia
Translations of「しっとり」for describing food
According to the search on
[cookpad](https://cookpad.com/search/%E3%81%97%E3%81%A3%E3%81%A8%E3%82%8A?order=date&recipe_hit=51369),
at the moment「しっとり」has the hit of 51,369 menus.

For instance, _"Gateau chocolate"_ :「しっとり濃厚★ガトーショコラ」, _"Chocolate cookie"_ :「
バレンタイン♡しっとり生チョコクッキー 」, _"Chicken Ham"_ :「しっとり鳥胸ハム」, _"Banana Cake"_
:「しっとりバナナケーキ」, _"Tofu Donuts"_ :「しっとり簡単豆腐ドーナツ」, _"Rice flour crepe"_
:「もちもち&しっとり米粉クレープ」, etc.

If the texture of food is "moist", you can safely use it to any kinds of food.

I am not sure why they said that the word is untranslatable. Unless the food
is the thing which you can not eat outside Japan or hard to find, it should be
translatable.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-09T05:31:16.453
74339
2020-02-09T05:31:16.453
34735
74337
answer
In my opinion, calling しっとり untranslatable in the context of food is a rather
flippant exaggeration. The English word 'moist' is a perfectly good
translation in many cases. It is common to describe a cake as 'moist',
invoking the idea of it being soft or luscious. しっとり has a similar sense of a
high moisture content giving the food item a pleasing feeling in the mouth.

To be honest, I would say there are very few (if any) untranslatable words in
any language. If you insist on having a one-word to one-word correspondence,
then maybe you could argue there are words which have no counterpart in other
languages. But who is insisting on that? Language is such a flexible thing
that concepts can generally be rendered easily into other languages.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-09T16:59:49.847
74344
2020-02-09T17:20:15.417
2020-02-09T17:20:15.417
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answer