How to Handle Untranslatable Words

You’ve probably heard of the Japanese word “Tsundoku”. It refers to the action of buying books and letting them accumulate without ever reading them. Or maybe you’ve heard of “Sisu”, a Finnish word that encapsulates the ideal national character of Finland and doesn’t have an English equivalent. Those are good examples of words that cannot be translated concisely in other languages. It is not at all uncommon for translators to have to deal with words that are deemed “untranslatable”. You can find some words in every language, especially in documents for translation. Sometimes, there is no grammatical reason for the absence of a translation, but we cannot just come up with new words. That is what we call a lexical gap.

In his book "To say almost the same thing", famous critic and semiotician Umberto Eco analyzed many examples of challenging translations from his own experiences. He concluded that an effective translation should “create the same effect in the reader as the original text intended”, and not necessarily allow for an accurate back translation.

The French, for instance, have their fair share of untranslatable words. You know the French like their cuisine, so it is no surprise they should have a single word to talk about the love of good food: gourmandise. It is not, however, synonymous with gluttony, but someone who is a “gourmand” is not indifferent to tasty treats and will sometimes indulge in one, but not in excess. It is, in short (but not short enough)  “the love of good food”.

That is not to say that untranslatable words cannot be expressed in other ways in the target language. There is always a way, of course; an explanation or a more or less equivalent phrase. However, in the localization industry, equivalences do not always work, especially in marketing contexts, for instance, or when a project involves character limits. What to do, then? It all depends on the project.

While technical, legal, and medical texts fall into another category where untranslatability must always be overcome with precision and brevity, Eco’s sentiment can certainly apply to literary translation, but also to marketing translation, or to video localization for dubbing and subtitling, or to any situation where the effect of the message is more important than the terminology employed to create that effect.

SimulTrans can adapt to the needs of every customer. If you have medical documents that need translating, rest assured that our approach will reflect the requirements of such texts, and terminology will be handled with extreme care. In the scientific and technical industries, nothing is really untranslatable, and English loan words are even becoming commonplace as technology sometimes evolves faster than the language.

In most tech projects, industry-specific terminology will either have an official translation or the English word will be commonly accepted. It can get more challenging in marketing translations, where knowing who will be exposed to the target is essential in the localization process: are experts or knowledgeable people going to read this brochure? Or are we trying to attract new customers that don’t necessarily know the industry jargon?

Content shock, growth hacking, storyscaping… Are these examples easily understood by the audience, or do they need to be explained? Is it better to hook the reader with an intriguing new word, or would that be a turn-off? Each project is unique, and SimulTrans can work hand in hand with their clients (for those that want to be actively involved) to identify the best approach or can act as a one-stop language service expert you can fully rely on to get culturally accurate and powerful wording.

Let’s imagine an American company coming up with a betting solution that streamlines the whole process and offers expert analysis to the betters. Their brochure contains the phrase “You score the Home Run – We do the Monday-Morning Quarterbacking”. The baseball and North American football-based terminology would make no sense to French customers since those sports are not played there. The slogan is, therefore, untranslatable as is and must be adapted to the target culture. It would make sense to used terms associated with rugby and soccer for instance: “Vous transformez l’essai ; nous, on s’occupe du débriefing d’après match”.

All of our translation projects are handled by in-country native speakers that have a deep understanding of the local market, whatever the type of content you need to localize: marketing brochures, technical manuals, medical documentation, tutorial videos, websites, software strings, legal texts, and so on.

At SimulTrans, we can bridge the lexical gaps. Nothing is truly untranslatable. There can be challenging terms, of course, but as long as we stay true to Umberto Eco’s conclusions, you can rest assured that your text will always be in good hands with us.

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