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The world's most difficult word to translate has been identified as "ilunga" from the Tshiluba language spoken in south-eastern DR Congo.
It came top of a list drawn up in consultation with 1,000 linguists.
Ilunga means "a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time".
It seems straightforward enough, but the 1,000 language experts identified it as the hardest word to translate.
In second place was shlimazl which is Yiddish for "a chronically unlucky person".
Third was Naa, used in the Kansai area of Japan to emphasise statements or agree with someone.
Although the definitions seem fairly precise, the problem is trying to convey the local references associated with such words, says Jurga Zilinskiene, head of Today Translations, which carried out the survey.
"Probably you can have a look at the dictionary and... find the meaning," she said. "But most importantly it's about cultural experiences and... cultural emphasis on words."
The speed at which simultaneous interpreters work only adds to the difficulty of trying to explain words with complex meanings.
And technical jargon, often found in politics, business or sport, has difficulties of its own.
Miss Zilinskiene's own bete noir is "googly", a cricketing term for "an off-breaking ball disguised by the bowler with an apparent leg-break action".
But then many people find cricket incomprehensible anyway. Naa.
It came top of a list drawn up in consultation with 1,000 linguists.
Ilunga means "a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time".
It seems straightforward enough, but the 1,000 language experts identified it as the hardest word to translate.
In second place was shlimazl which is Yiddish for "a chronically unlucky person".
Third was Naa, used in the Kansai area of Japan to emphasise statements or agree with someone.
Although the definitions seem fairly precise, the problem is trying to convey the local references associated with such words, says Jurga Zilinskiene, head of Today Translations, which carried out the survey.
"Probably you can have a look at the dictionary and... find the meaning," she said. "But most importantly it's about cultural experiences and... cultural emphasis on words."
The speed at which simultaneous interpreters work only adds to the difficulty of trying to explain words with complex meanings.
And technical jargon, often found in politics, business or sport, has difficulties of its own.
Miss Zilinskiene's own bete noir is "googly", a cricketing term for "an off-breaking ball disguised by the bowler with an apparent leg-break action".
But then many people find cricket incomprehensible anyway. Naa.
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Unsu...
Re: Language fun and oddities!
Mon, January 9, 2006 - 12:23 AMThe complexity of the Czech language
Due to its complexity is said to be one of the world's most difficult languages to learn. The complexity originates from several sources:
* extensive morphology (some words have over 200 possible word forms)
* free word order (often all the permutations are valid)
Both are true for almost all Slavic languages, so why Czech is considered more difficult than other Slavic languages here? For me it was not not more difficult than Polish for example. So I propose to delete this paragraph as the author's private point of view.
People seem to like calling every Slavic language "[one of] the world's most difficult languages to learn". Indeed, it's largely opinion and may be freely discarded.
And there's a lot of other candidates too. People often call Chinese one of the world's most difficult languages to learn, and some African languages are occasionally cited as candidates as well. -
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Unsu...
Re: Language fun and oddities!
Mon, January 9, 2006 - 12:23 AMLanguage pros find world's most untranslatable word
Peter Freedman - Today Translations
June 28, 2004
Googly, Spam and gobbledegook have been voted among the most untranslatable words in the English language, in a worldwide poll of a thousand professional translators and interpreters.
But the most untranslatable word in any language, reckon the translators, is ilunga, a word in the Bantu language of Tshiluba for a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time; to tolerate it a second time; but never a third time. And I suppose we all know that kind of person.
It narrowly outpointed shlimazl, a Yiddish word for a chronically unlucky person and radioukacz, a Polish word for a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain. And both finished well ahead of klloshar, the Albanian word for loser, which, perhaps fittingly, came in last place.
The most untranslatable word in the English language was reckoned to be plenipotentiary, which even many native English-speakers may not know means a special ambassador or envoy, invested with full powers.
Whimsy, bumf and serendipity (the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident) were other words among the top ten.
The survey was conducted by Today Translations, a London-based translation and interpreting agency, which asked a thousand of its linguists across the world to nominate the words that they found hardest to translate.
"My own vote would have gone to googly", says Jurga Zilinskiene, the managing director of Today Translations, who worked as an interpreter herself before founding Today and becoming an award-winning businesswoman.
"People sometimes forget that an interpreter, for example, must translate not just from one language to another but from one culture to another", says Zilinskiene, 27. "Sometimes, the equivalent idea just does not exist in both cultures. I am from Lithuania, for example, and we simply do not have googlies in Lithuania."
Indeed, confesses Ms Zilinskiene, although she knew that googly was something to do with cricket she could not have told you for certain that it was, in fact, an off-breaking ball with an apparent leg-break action on the part of the bowler.
Other foreign words to make the top 10 included naa, a Japanese word used only in the Kansai area of Japan to emphasise statements or agree with someone, and pochemuchka, the Russian word for a person who asks a lot of questions.
Today Translations uses a worldwide network of over 1,500 professional linguists to provide translation and interpreting services. After asking a thousand of this network to nominate words that were problematic to translate, it then asked 50 of them to vote for just one of the top contenders.
Linguists taking part in the poll were native speakers of languages ranging from English and French to Turkish, Ukranian, Chinese, Dari, Farsi, Amharic, Pushto, Somali, Tamil and many others.
THE TEN FOREIGN WORDS THAT WERE VOTED HARDEST TO TRANSLATE
1 ilunga (Tshiluba word for a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time; to tolerate it a second time; but never a third time. Note: Tshiluba is a Bantu language spoken in south-eastern Congo, and Zaire)
2 shlimazl (Yiddish for a chonically unlucky person)
3 radioukacz (Polish for a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain)
4 naa (Japanese word only used in the Kansai area of Japan, to emphasise statements or agree with someone)
5 altahmam (Arabic for a kind of deep sadness)
6 gezellig (Dutch for cosy)
7 saudade (Portuguese for a certain type of longing)
8 selathirupavar (Tamil for a certain type of truancy)
9 pochemuchka (Russian for a person who asks a lot of questions)
10 klloshar (Albanian for loser)
THE TEN ENGLISH WORDS THAT WERE VOTED HARDEST TO TRANSLATE
1 plenipotentiary
2 gobbledegook
3 serendipity
4 poppycock
5 googly
6 Spam
7 whimsy
8 bumf
9 chuffed
10 kitsch -
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Unsu...
Re: Language fun and oddities!
Mon, January 9, 2006 - 12:24 AMA link to "Language Fun"
home.planet.nl/~blade068/languagefun/
More Language Fun here (great site)
mcraeclan.com/Graeme/Language/
Lost in translation.
www.tashian.com/multibabel/
I post it again (we must be able to post in redneck on this tribe)
rinkworks.com/dialect/
Weird Facts (great page)
www.anvari.org/fun/Truth/..._Facts.html
Want to chat with a program?, ha ha, try this.
www.jabberwacky.com/j2convbydate-608
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Re: Language fun and oddities!
Sat, January 14, 2006 - 11:15 AMChris has put so many links here that maybe this is somewhere already. Here you can learn the language of Vikings:
www.geocities.com/Athens/Ac...index.html
By the way, I've just learned I'm ilunga who is schimazl and pochemuchka who suffers from altahmam. GREAT! :)
You have a great day too! -
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Unsu...
Re: Language fun and oddities!
Sun, January 15, 2006 - 12:00 AMI think i missed that one..............
:) -
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Re: Language fun and oddities!
Mon, January 30, 2006 - 1:38 AM -
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Unsu...
Re: Language fun and oddities!
Mon, March 20, 2006 - 3:01 AMTWENTY-ONE REASONS WHY ENGLISH IS HARD TO LEARN.
1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there was no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen on how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18. After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? -
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Unsu...
Re: Language fun and oddities!
Mon, March 20, 2006 - 3:01 AMENGLISH IS VERY STRANGE!
Did you know that "verb" is a noun?
How can you look up words in a dictionary if you can't spell them?
If a word is misspelled in a dictionary, how would we ever know?
If two mouses are mice and two louses are lice, why aren't two houses hice?
If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words?
If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?
If you've read a book, you can reread it. But wouldn't this also mean that you would have to "member" somebody in order to remember them?
In Chinese, why are the words for crisis and opportunity the same?
Is it a coincidence that the only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable?
Is there another word for a synonym?
Shouldn't there be a shorter word for "monosyllabic"?
What is another word for "thesaurus"?
Where do swear words come from?
Why can't you make another word using all the letters in "anagram"?
Why do fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
Why do people use the word "irregardless"?
Why do some people type "cool" as "kewl?"
Why do we say something is out of whack? What is a whack?
Why do we say something's out of order when its broken but we never say in of order when it works?
Why does "cleave" mean both split apart and stick together?
Why does "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing?
Why does flammable and inflammable mean the same thing?
Why does the Chinese ideogram for trouble symbolize two women living under one roof?
Why does X stand for a kiss and O stand for a hug?
Why doesn't "onomatopoeia" sound like what it is?
Why don't we say "why" instead of "how come"?
Why is "crazy man" an insult, while to insert a comma and say "Crazy, man!" is a compliment?
Why are a wise man and wise guy opposites?
Why is abbreviation such a long word?
Why is dyslexic so hard to spell?
Why is it so hard to remember how to spell MNEMONIC?
Why is it that no word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple?
Why is it that the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary?
Why is it that we recite at a play and play at a recital?
Why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
Why is the plural of goose-geese, and not the plural of moose-meese?
Why isn't "palindrome" spelled the same way backwards?
Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds? -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Language fun and oddities!
Mon, March 20, 2006 - 11:31 AMYour question about dyslexia reminds me of a bumper sticker idea that I heard about several years ago: Dyslexics untie!
Regards, Larry
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