Dance After Dark Photography

I’m reading a book about “untranslateables” - words that can’t be directly translated and require a paragraph or more of explanation. There’s a Czech proverb, quoted in the book’s introduction, that I’ve always enjoyed. “If you know only one language, you live only one life.” That’s very true. I think that truly understanding another language gives you a new level of perception. People think in words, so the words and expressions available set the framework within which one can think. As illustration, I’ll point to Ayn Rand’s Anthem, in which Equality struggles to regain the long-lost concept of “I,” or to Orwell’s 1984, which sets forth the argument that controlling a nation’s language controls that nation’s thoughts.

Connotation lends a nuance to perception that is unique to one’s culture. The word “table” in Italian carries deep echoes of family, support, sharing, and comfort. I’d suggest that the closest word in English which evokes the same imagery would be “hearth,” but how can a translator take a poem nominally about food but centered around the concept of tavola and place it in the living room of an American household? More to the point, how many American homes really have a hearth? It’s not part of our McCulture, so for me the word “hearth” brings to mind the warm, cozy comforts of home - in the past tense.

Seriousness aside, I have a new favorite word. Schadenfreude literally translates as “damage-joy,” and it’s the guilty pleasure of laughing at someone else’s pain or tragedy. Thus my new motto that schadenfreude is German for Walker.

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