= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Elliott comments on Epilogue: Atonement (8/8) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (179)
if you can translate them, they're hardly untranslatable
Really? In that case, please translate the word "naches" from Yiddish to English in one word.
How about "naches"? English: "Why translate when you can steal?"
"pleasure"
The level of translation they were using wasn't all that fancy. They certainly had worse translations than that.
Easy: contentment.
Contentment is insufficient, because it's a specific flavor of contentment, isn't it?
There are many examples of this scenario, both in fact and fiction; an untranslatable word so laden with connotation that it cannot effectively be replaced. Usually, these words represent some core value of their society of origin (reference: the Dwarves' Super-Honor in Eragon). In a way, the fact that they cannot be translated helps convey their meaning, showing their importance and giving them a quality of both simpleness and complexity, as if your brain was meant to have a word for them, as if they were simply a basic part of the universe falling into place. It's a beautiful thing, really.