{"id":307536,"date":"2017-12-27T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-27T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2017\/12\/27\/lost-in-translation-an-illustrated-compendium-of-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world\/"},"modified":"2018-06-12T12:33:19","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T16:33:19","slug":"lost-in-translation-an-illustrated-compendium-of-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2017\/12\/27\/lost-in-translation-an-illustrated-compendium-of-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"“Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World” by Ella Frances Sanders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nLost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World\u00a0<\/em>by Ella Frances Sanders<\/strong>
\n112 pgs. | hc |\u00a09781607747109 | $14.99
\nTen Speed Press<\/strong>
\nReviewed by Kaija Straumanis<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hello and greetings in the 2017 holiday season!<\/p>\n

For those of you still looking for something to gift a friend or family member this winter season, or if you\u2019re on the lookout for something to gift in the future, or even if you\u2019re looking for something small and fun to gift to yourself\u2014and especially if you want to break the ice in terms of the topic of translation (maybe you\u2019re still trying to get your family on-board with your affection for translated literature and languages, either as a career or a reading preference? maybe it\u2019ll be easier than getting them to accept your middle-aged jam-band aspirations or that questionable tattoo idea you still believe is representative of who you really<\/em> are?) I wanted to take a quick moment to recommend something I myself was recently gifted: Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As a translator, it\u2019s often that I find myself in a group of translator friends in which someone brings up an \u201cuntranslatable\u201d word in a language he or she is working from. Just a few days ago, for me, this was the Latvian word \u201cdr\u0113gns,\u201d which a dictionary will decipher as \u201cdamp,\u201d \u201ccold,\u201d \u201cclammy,\u201d or \u201cchilly\u201c\u2014when in fact, it\u2019s all of these words at the same time, and then some. It\u2019s the type of cold, damp, seep-into-your-bones autumn or winter rainy weather that chills you to your very core and sticks around for a while even after you\u2019ve made it to warmer surroundings. One word doesn\u2019t do it justice; it\u2019s so much more than just that one word.<\/p>\n

Ella Frances Sanders\u2019s Lost in Translation<\/em> is a little coffee-table type book that explores just these kids of words from various languages across the globe. Complete with fun and colorful illustrations, a \u201csummary\u201d of the respective word\u2019s meaning, and a definition thereof, the book is a great way to show off the intricacies, difficulties, and even beauties of what it takes and means to translate from one language to another. It\u2019s, like, Translation 101 Lite\u2122. Just enough to intrigue any non-translation-mined reader, but not too heavy or scary to make them scream and run to hide as if the thing had just turned into a snake, or a (seasonally appropriate) fruit cake. (Which I\u2019ll never<\/em> understand because fruit cake is AMAZING<\/span>, especially after my grandmother cuts it up and drizzles a teaspoon of brandy over each slice.)<\/p>\n

Sure, there are a few nit-picky things about the book itself\u2014it would have been nice to have a pronuncuation guide for each word, to make an effort to keep any one language from be represented more than once (Sanders gets some pretty damn unknown [to me at least] languages and dialects in here, like Nguni Bantu, but there are so many Japanese, German, and Swedish words represented), and maybe being more careful with the grammatical categorization of these words (while it is explained whether the word is a noun\/adjective\/verb in its original language, the English definition often has to stray from the original categorization in order to explain what the word means\u2014the Hindi noun \u201cjugaad\u201d is then defined as \u201cn. Ensuring that things happen even with minimal resources\u2026\u201d But that\u2019s changing the noun into a verb, right? I\u2019M SORRY<\/span> I CAN<\/span>\u2019T HELP<\/span> IT)\u2014but there is plenty to enjoy and fall in love with, and it was neat to find a few words that have Latvian equivalents, or at least words as close as two foreign words can be to one another.<\/p>\n

Two of my personal favorites from the book are the Welsh word \u201chiraeth\u201d:<\/p>\n

n. A homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, the nostalgia and the grief for the lost places of your past, places that never were.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

(because what\u2019s more beautiful than d\u00e9j\u00e0-vu mixed with melancholy?) and the Norwegian word \u201cp\u00e5legg\u201d:<\/p>\n

n. Anything and everything you can put on a slice of bread.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Because SANDWICHES<\/span>. Enjoy the rest of the festivities that are upon us, check out this book for yourself or a loved one (or a despised one, if you know someone more anal-retentive than me when it comes to picking apart what is supposed to be a book of joy and escapism), and season\u2019s greetings from Open Letter!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World\u00a0by Ella Frances Sanders 112 pgs. | hc |\u00a09781607747109 | $14.99 Ten Speed Press Reviewed by Kaija Straumanis   Hello and greetings in the 2017 holiday season! For those of you still looking for something to gift a friend or family member this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":401142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[66796,39476,66816,66806],"class_list":["post-307536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-ella-frances-sanders","tag-kaija-straumanis","tag-lost-in-translation","tag-ten-speed-press"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307536"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401162,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307536\/revisions\/401162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}