Register Although
Thai has words that can be used as equivalent to English "I", "you", or "he/she/it", they are relatively formal terms (or markedly informal). In most cases, Thai people use words which express the relation between speaker and listener according to their respective roles. For instance, for a mother to say to her child "I'll tell you a story", she would say "" (), or "Mother will tell child a story". Similarly, older and younger friends will often use sibling terminology, so that an older friend telling a younger friend "You're my friend" would be "" (), would translate directly as "Younger sibling is older sibling’s friend". To be translated into English correctly, it is proper to use "I" and "you" for these example statements, but normal Thai perceptions of relation are lost in the process. A similar feature can also be observed in Indonesian. One may use the formal form of pronouns, which are generally distinct from the informal/familiar forms; however, the use of these pronouns does not evoke sufficient friendliness or intimacy, especially in spoken language. Instead of saying "", a waiter/waitress will most likely say "" (lit. 'Father/Mother wants to order what?'). The two expressions are equally polite; however, the latter is more sympathetic and friendly. When conversing with family and relatives, most Indonesians also prefer using
kinship terminology (father, mother, brother, sister) when addressing older family members. When addressing younger family members, informal pronouns are more prevalent.
Verb forms English lacks some grammatical categories which are present in some other languages. There is no simple way in English to contrast Finnish or Polish (continuing, corresponding to English 'to write') with or (a regular
frequentative, 'to occasionally write short passages at a time', or 'to jot down now and then'). Similarly, and (to jump once) contrast with and (to continuously jump; to be jumping from point A to B). Irish allows the
prohibitive mood to be used in the
passive voice. The effect is used to prohibit something while expressing society's disapproval for that action at the same time. For example, contrast (meaning 'Don't smoke' when said to more than one person), which uses the second person plural in the imperative meaning "Do not smoke", with (best translated as 'Smoking just isn't done here'), which uses the autonomous imperative meaning 'One does not smoke'. Italian has three distinct declined past tenses: thus (), (), and () all mean 'I was'. The first indicates a concluded action in the (remote) past, the second a progressive or habitual action in the past, and the latter an action that holds some connection to the present, especially if a recent time is specified ("" for 'this morning I saw'). The is often used for narrative history (for example, novels). Nowadays, the difference between and is blurred in the spoken language, the latter being used in both situations. What difference there exists is partly geographic. In the north of Italy the is very rarely used in everyday speech, whereas in the south it often takes the place of the . The distinction is only alive in Tuscany, which makes it dialectal even if hardline purists insist it should be applied consistently. Likewise, English lacks a productive grammatical means to show
indirection but must instead rely on
periphrasis, that is the use of multiple words to explain an idea. Finnish grammar, on the contrary, allows the regular production of a series of verbal derivatives, each of which involves a greater degree of indirection. For example, on the basis of the verb ('to pull'), it is possible to produce: • (pull), • (cause something/someone to pull/to wind-up (lie)), • (cause something/someone to cause something/someone to pull), • (cause something/someone to cause something/someone to cause something/someone to pull). Hindi has a similar concept of indirection. means 'to do'; means 'to make someone do'; means 'to get someone to make yet another person do'. Most
Turkic languages (Turkish, Azeri, Kazakh) contain the grammatical verb suffix
miş (or
mis in other dialects), which indicates that the speaker did not witness the act personally but surmises or has discovered that the act has occurred or was told of it by another, as in the example of (Turkish), which can be expressed in English as "it is reported that he/she/it has gone", or, most concisely, as "apparently, he/she/it has gone". This grammatical form is especially used when telling jokes, or narrating stories. Similar to the Turkic
miş, nearly every
Quechua sentence is marked by an evidential
clitic, indicating the source of the speaker's knowledge (and how certain they are about the statement). The enclitic
=mi expresses personal knowledge (
Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirmi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver - I know it for a fact");
=si expresses hearsay knowledge (
Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirsi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, or so I've heard");
=chá expresses high probability (
Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirchá, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, most likely"). Colloquially, the latter is also used when the speaker has dreamed the event told in the sentence or experienced it while intoxicated. Languages that are extremely different from each other, like English and
Chinese, need their translations to be more like adaptations. Chinese has no
tenses per se, only three
aspects. The English verb "
to be" does not have a direct equivalent in Chinese. In an English sentence where "to be" leads to an
adjective ("It
is blue"), there is no "to be" in Chinese. (There are no adjectives in Chinese, instead there are
stative verbs that do not need an extra verb.) If it states a location, the verb () is used, as in "We
are in the house". In some other cases (usually when stating a judgement), the judgment verb () is used, as in "I
am the leader." And in most other cases, such structure ("to be") is simply not used, but some more natural structure in Chinese is used instead. Any sentence that requires a play on those different meanings will not work the same way in Chinese. In fact, very simple concepts in English can sometimes be difficult to translate, for example, there is no single direct translation for the word "yes" in Chinese, as in Chinese the affirmative is said by repeating the verb in the question. ("Do you have it?" "(I) have".)
Vocabulary German,
Dutch, and
Danish have a wealth of
modal particles that are particularly difficult to translate as they convey sense or tone rather than strictly grammatical information. The most infamous example perhaps is (Dutch: , Danish: ), which roughly means "Don't you realize that . . . ?" or "In fact it is so, though someone is denying it." What makes translating such words difficult is their different meanings depending on intonation or the context. A common use of the word can be found in the German sentence , which translates to ''The war wasn't lost yet, after all
or The war was still not lost.'' Several other grammatical constructs in English may be employed to translate these words for each of their occurrences. The same with slightly changed pronunciation can also mean excuse in defense to a question:
. . . but the war was not lost yet (. . . so we fought on). A use which relies heavily on intonation and context could produce yet another meaning: "So the war was really not over yet (as you have been trying to convince me all along)." Another change of intonation makes the sentence a question. would translate into
"(You mean) the war was not yet lost (back then)?" Similar difficulties occur with the Dutch words "even", "toch", and, especially, "
gezellig". Another well-known example comes from the Portuguese or Spanish verbs and , both being translatable as
to be (see
Romance copula). is used with essence or nature, while is used with ephemeral (temporary or current), states or conditions, however. Sometimes this information is not very relevant for the meaning of the whole sentence and the translator will ignore it, whereas at other times it can be retrieved from the context. When none of these apply, the translator usually uses a
paraphrase or simply adds words that can convey the right meaning. The following example comes from Portuguese: :"" :Spanish equivalent:"" :Literal translation: "I am not (apparently/just right now) handsome; I
am (essentially/always) handsome." :Adding words: "I am not just handsome today; I am always handsome." :Paraphrase: "I don't look handsome; I
am handsome." Some South Slavic words that have no English counterparts are
doček, a gathering organized at someone's arrival (the closest translation would be
greeting or
welcome, although a 'doček' is not necessarily positive); and
limar, a sheet metal worker.
Family Kinship terminology often varies across languages. Terms are often too specific or too general to translate into another language. Some rules used for defining kinship terminology include the following:
Paternal or maternal. For example,
Nordic languages,
Indo-Aryan languages, and
Chinese languages distinguish paternal and maternal relatives such as paternal grandmother and maternal grandmother. Conversely, son's son and daughter's son are also distinguished (instead of
grandson). Also distinguished maternally and paternally, aunts and uncles are further distinguished in many languages (compare to non-specific-sided
great aunt and
great uncle).
Gender. Whereas English kinship terms make clear distinction between genders (i.e.,
brother,
sister), many languages do not. For example, Thai does not distinguish between siblings by gender, but only by age. Thai also disregards gender when aunts or uncles are younger than their parents, and has one word for all nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. On the flip side, the English word
cousins does not distinguish gender, but many languages do, including
Romance languages,
Slavic languages, and Chinese languages.
By blood or by marriage. For example, the English word
uncle can refer to a parent's brother, or a husband of a parent's sibling. Many languages, such as
Hindi,
Bengali,
Hungarian, and
Chinese distinguish these. This is also true for
Latin where e.g. refers to one's mother's brother, but cannot refer to one's mother's sister's husband, named thus (the husband of the maternal aunt).
Full or half sibling. In Arabic, "brother" is often translated into (). However, whilst this word may describe a brother who shares either one or both parents, there is a separate word - () - to describe a brother with whom one shares both parents. '''Age relative to oneself or one's parent'''. For example in
Bengali, father's elder brothers are called (), while the father's younger brothers are called (). Their wives are called () and (), respectively. Another common issue is translating
brother or
sister into Chinese or Japanese, which have separate words for older and younger ones.
Relations by marriage. There is no standard English word for the Italian "", Yiddish "", Japanese, Chinese, and Korean have words for classmates and colleagues of different seniority and/or gender. The most well-known example to English speakers is probably the Japanese word (), referring to a senior classmate or colleague. There are also times when the same concept exists but the practice is different, such as
homeschooling in Spanish and its practice in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Latin American countries. Translators must discern whether the existing terms convey the same concepts.
Foreign objects Objects unknown to a culture can actually be easy to translate. For example, in Japanese,
wasabi is a
plant (
Wasabia japonica) used as a spicy
Japanese
condiment. Traditionally, this plant only grows in Japan. It would be unlikely that someone from a country such as Angola would have a clear understanding of it. However, the easiest way to translate this word is to
borrow it. Or one can use a similar
vegetable's name to describe it. In English this word is translated as
wasabi or
Japanese horseradish. In Chinese, people can still call it
wasabi by its Japanese sound, or pronounce it by its
Hanzi characters, (
pinyin:
shān kuí). However, wasabi is more frequently called () or () in China and Taiwan, meaning
mustard. One may specify
yellow mustard and
green mustard to avoid confusion. Another method is using description instead of a single word. For example, languages like Russian and Ukrainian have borrowed words
Kuraga and
Uruk from Turkic languages. While both fruits are now known to the Western world, there are still no terms for them in English. English speakers have to use "dried
apricot without core" and "dried apricot with core" instead. One particular type of foreign object that poses difficulties is the proper noun. As an illustration, consider another example from
Douglas Hofstadter, which he published in one of his "
Metamagical Themas" columns in
Scientific American. He pondered the question: "
Who is the first lady of Britain? Well, first ladies reside at the prime minister's address, and at the time, the woman living at 10 Downing Street was
Margaret Thatcher. But a different attribute that first ladies have is that they are married to heads of government, so perhaps a better answer was
Denis Thatcher, but he probably would not have relished the title."
Concepts Concepts unknown or less known to a culture are difficult to translate because there are no corresponding
lexemes. When translating US-specific concepts such as
mobile home and
foster children, translators cannot simply
calque but find ways to adapt the translation such as using a descriptive phrase. – which is devoted to the issues and problems of translation, with particular emphasis on the translation of poetry. Another example given by Hofstadter is the translation of the poem
Jabberwocky by
Lewis Carroll, with its wealth of
neologisms and
portmanteau words, into a number of foreign tongues. A notable
Irish joke is that it is not possible to translate
mañana into
Irish as the Irish "don't have a word that conveys that degree of urgency".
Iconicity According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann, "Iconicity might be the reason for refraining from translating
Hallelujah and
Amen in so many languages, as if the sounds of such basic religious notions have to do with their
referents themselves – as if by losing the sound, one might lose the meaning. Compare this to the Kabbalistic power of letters, for example in the case of
gematria, the method of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures by interchanging words whose letters have the same numerical value when added. A simple example of gematric power might be the famous proverb (), or lit. "entered wine went out secret", that is, "wine brings out the truth",
in vino veritas. The gematric value of , or wine, is 70 (י=10; י=10; ן=50) and this is also the gematric value of , or secret, (ס=60; ו=6; ד=4). Thus, this sentence, according to many Jews at the time, had to be true."
Barbarous names are
magical formulas often taken from foreign languages, but corrupted or meaningless to the magician.
Iamblichus discusses barbarous names, warning magicians not to translate them even if their original meaning is discovered, due to the belief that the power of the names resided in their sound, not their meaning. In the modern era,
Aleister Crowley also argued that the supposed effectiveness of barbarous names rested in their utterance, not their meaning. ==See also==