When you study a foreign language like Japanese or Korean, you begin to understand that there are a lot of terms that we can’t express in English because the words simply don’t exist.
Take “lifestyle” for example. In Japanese, 生活. In Korean, 생활. It would be fine if it only existed as a noun, like it does in English. But in Japanese and Korean, you can tack on the verb “do” to the end. Now you are “doing lifestyle”. While we can still say “have a lifestyle” in English, it’s not as flexible as the terms in Japanese and Korean.
Korean: 학생들은 보통 국제 학생 기숙사에 머물면서 생활한다.
Japanese: 学生たちはふつうに国際学生寮に泊まって生活する。
English: Students typically stay (and lifestyle!) at an international student dorm.
It’s really difficult for me to include the “do lifestyle” part of the sentence, where it includes the same nuance in the original language. (As distinct from 住む and 暮らす) The following sentence sounds awkward:
“Students typically stay in and have a lifestyle at an international student dorm.”
To translate it simply, we could just write it as, “Students typically live in an international student dorm,” but we have to abandon the idea that they aren’t simply “staying” there, but have a distinct lifestyle within the housing unit. While it’s easy enough to translate the information, it’s difficult to translate every subtle nuance and insinuation. I guess that’s one of the skills people have to master in order to become good translators.
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10 points for accurate assessment of linguistic awkwardness! Ha ha. I am also never going to be a translator. I’m still trying to effectively express myself in English…sigh. Anyway, I like these posts. More, please.
I am a proponent of the belief that anything, even nuance, can be translated in most cases. This determination was born when people that I thought knew more than me told me that I could say things like, “one shouldn’t ~” or “forgiveness,” only to later to find these people were wrong.
We verb nouns in English, we just have to change what “suru” translates as.
Students typically experience life while staying at the international dorms.
To me, experiencing life entails a lifestyle, but we could say “a college lifestyle” instead here.
Ug, someday wordpress needs to come out with editable comments.
“coudn’t say” is what I meant to say. People telling me that I can’t translate my English to Japanese.
Or yoroshiku to English, for that matter.
I didn’t delete any of your ranting, John Blackthorne. Chill out.
As a fellow linguist, this is interesting case. I’ve sorta been on the fence on whether or not languages completely translated into each other but…sometimes it’s really easy to see that they don’t.
I really love translation the phrase:
???????????????
“I want to (humbly) received (the ability) to let me go but…”
Haha, that’s of course a joke translations. I love dealing with the various aspects of honorifics particularly in Japanese (and when I know Korean, in Korean too).
How about ??????for a rough word to translate? It’s a word with dual meanings that shift from context to context. (There are a bunch in both English and Japanese that do that, though.)
Your post reminded me of the very current Korean phrase ?????, literally ‘lifestyle-ize’, i.e. ‘make something a part of your lifestyle/routine’.
This construction seems to be used most commonly in PSAs, as in the third result when you look up ‘??? ???’ in Google: ??? ????? ?????? (Let’s make self checks for testicular cancer a regular part of our lives)
I can’t speak to the Korean here, but with the Japanese your post seems to be predicated on the idea that just because “lifestyle” can be translated as ??, ?? should properly be backtranslated as “lifestyle.” This is clearly not the case, and here I would say that there is no special nuance of “lifestyle” that is lost when translating from the Japanese ???? to the English “live.”
You’re right, there are often nuances that are hard or impossible to translate. But I think you’re overthinking this one.
So then what do you feel is the nuanced difference between the following two sentences, and how would you produce natural English sentences that carried the nuance over in translation?
?????????????
????????????
I may just be overlooking it, but I’m pretty sure I’m not, because ???? has never felt like it’s something we say in English. (By the way, I asked native speakers in both Korean [my wife] and Japanese [my co-worker], and the sentences above have slightly different nuances.)
生活する has a nuance of “going about one’s daily business,” as opposed to 住む which is closer to “reside (in).” But given no external context at all, I would translate both sentences as “(They) live in the international dorms.”
One problem here is that different words are used in different contexts. While both 住む and 生活する can both be translated as “live,” the contexts in which you see them are very different. 生活する sounds more formal, more likely to be used in writing than casual speech. 住む is very casual, bare-bones, matter-of-fact.
So I would expect to see ???????????? in a pamphlet for prospective students, and I might translate it as “Exchange students live and study in the International Dormitory.” And I would expect to hear ??????????? in a conversation where an exchange student is introducing himself, and I would translate it as “I live in the international dorms.”
I’m rambling now. I hope that made sense.
Err, I just remembered my point: There is no such thing as translating without context, and with context you have a vehicle for expressing that lost nuance. Like maybe I would say “Exchange students live in the International Dormitory. Here they enjoy Japanese food, practice their newly-learned Japanese phrases, and socialize with other students from around the world.” So while 生活する turned into boring-old “live,” the nuance of “lifestyle” or whatever you want to call it is carried by the surrounding content.
So picking one sentence out, saying “there is some mystical je ne sais quoi that cannot be translated” and throwing your hands up in the air is a bit hasty. A good translator translates meaning, not words.
I’m not saying that you can’t produce something that works, but I’m saying that sometimes you can’t express the exact same feelings that come from either language, which is why translations themselves are considered works of art – The translators have to adapt a story into a different language.
For example,
空が高いな – We don’t have this phrase in English. A translator would probably use instead, “Fall is in the air.” It works, and it’s natural, but it’s not the same nuance.
Another example would be addressing the people around you as 兄貴 or お姉さん when they aren’t related to you. We simply don’t do that in English. We can’t express the subtleties of 君, ちゃん, さん, 様, 氏, etc. We have to be explicit when we translate てめぇ – Sometimes even to the point where you see the term “you bastard” applied. The story translates, but the exact same feelings don’t.
Sorry about the 文字化け, but moving my site to a new server destroyed the comments.
I will say, though, that there are other terms to trip us up when translating to English, including 住む and 暮らす.
the only thing that can happen in translation is loss of information.. an exact translation(rare if not a basic-intermediate textbook level sentence) or adding of information that wasn’t there.. it’s not a big deal.. there’s concepts that didn’t exist in english that come from asian languages(and i suspect other languages) like chi/gi.. or how about tao/dao? unless of course.. i’m completely wrong… or maybe just some wrong..
and language isn’t real.. i mean.. it’s just a bunch of symbols for conveying concepts in our head..(or wherever they are) so i think some things aren’t even conveyable in any language.. just my thoughts… unless…..
i just noticed this is a super(relative) old post..ㅋㅋ
There are no old posts on this site!
Everything is an ongoing conversation.
I particularly like the Korean word ‘han’ which isn’t very translatable, but means something like simmering discord for lack of justice, or pent up feelings of remorse. It’s really an important part of the Korean identity.