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21 Emotions with No English words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4951 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 17 of 18 27 July 2013 at 7:47pm | IP Logged |
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"Etwas eingestehen" seems very untranslatable into English. German speakers I have
spoken to tell me it's not like "zugeben" (to admit, general stuff one was in denial about or just hiding from others), or "gestehen" (to confess, more literal as in "confess to a crime"). Eingestehen is, as they describe it and how I come to think of it now "an internal struggle to admit something, but not quite confess it". It's like your conscience recognizes something must be admitted, but the mind fights to admit it. It's also been described to be as an "airy, gossamer" feeling of confessing to something. Using the other two verbs would be too literal or overt. In other words, I can't translate it. In French, "assurer" used colloquially is rather untranslatable into English. It sort of means "to hold up/hold your own" in something, but in English that tends to imply there is some effort in keeping such a position or status. In French, it has a more positive and stable connotation, while still imparting sometimes an element of surprise (i.e, the speaker wasn't expecting someone to be at math, but he is, and he didn't seem too wobbly at it, so "Ce mec assure en Maths"). In this case as well there is a difficulty in pointing down all the nuances in one word that in English just are not possible to render without clumsy translations. In Spanish "tergiversar" cannot be well translated into English. It means something like "to take something someone says, purposefully misinterpret it, and reply with a comment that is based on such a misinterpretation but that many times still holds some truth to it". It is a popular word in discussion forums. I have never been able to use less than entire sentences to describe in English what that one word does in Spanish. And don't bother with the false friend "to tergiversate" in English, or "tergiverser" in French! Not the same at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Zoulch Diglot Newbie France Joined 4108 days ago 3 posts - 6 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 18 of 18 04 September 2013 at 10:46am | IP Logged |
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There's a site dedicated to those untranslatable words and expressions :
www.betterthanenglish.com Edited by Zoulch on 04 September 2013 at 10:47am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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