Untranslatable Idioms Debate

The cluster centers on discussions about challenges in translating idioms and cultural expressions into English, often debating if they are truly untranslatable or just poorly rendered due to literal translations by non-native speakers.

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Keywords

TFA US blogspot.co IBM wikipedia.org L2 table.html UI english translation language translated words meaning translate bible english language phrases

Sample Comments

emeraldd • Apr 6, 2020 • View on HN

This seems like it might be a situation where the connotations do not translate very well rather than a question of direct meaning.

atoav • Oct 28, 2023 • View on HN

If I had to guess I'd say English is not their first language (like it isn't mine) and they just translated a term from their own language into English ; )

xela79 • Feb 1, 2024 • View on HN

this was posted before, many of the "untranslatable" things are perfectly translatable.

jagged-chisel • Sep 20, 2021 • View on HN

Linguistic curiosity: why would these expressions not be translated into English?

ardit33 • May 18, 2008 • View on HN

sorry, probably the wrong wording and cultural differences; some phrases' meaning do not translate well.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF • Dec 12, 2024 • View on HN

Apparently I don't speak English cause I thought it had a more literal meaning

louhike • Sep 21, 2012 • View on HN

Maybe there's a similar word in another language. There's lot of mistakes of this kind. For example, french often say "actually" when they mean "currently", because its translation is "actuellement".

pyrale • Jun 21, 2022 • View on HN

Ah, that would explain this. The nuance doesn't carry on in my language.

lloeki • Aug 9, 2012 • View on HN

Thanks, I'm not a native english speaker so I misunderstood the idiomatic expression's true meaning.

ceejayoz • Feb 6, 2019 • View on HN

It's fairly common for translators to do this to idioms that might not make sense in the destination language.