words that don't exist in English

[Wilson Gray]

On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 2:35 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is something very unusual about Nabokov's ability to write in both
> languages. Of course, some people on both sides think his work to be
> crap (not me). If you've ever seen Osennii Marafon (The Autumn Marathon,
> although that's a very weak translation), there is a scene there where
> the main character tries to explain to a Danish translator (another main
> character) the nuances of interpreting Dostoyevskii. He specifically
> focuses on the sentence with "obliz'iana", which is, of course,
> untranslatable because it's a made up word--but it's made up with a
> purpose. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079679/ There are a few other
> language-related jokes with cultural background ("Cocktail! Cocktail!").
> But this one is directly on point.


And then there's _Pnin'_, with its protagonist's amusing attempt at
rendering the Russian names of gestures into meaningful English.

> We just use different verbs--or different prefixes instead of prepositions.

Well, of course. That's my point. it's not the case that concept C in
language L can't be clearly expressed in language M. It's only that,
occasionally, a workaround, instead of a word-for-word translation,
may be necessary or the word-for-word translation may be available,
but the _Gefuehl_ is missing. Once, in San Francisco, which has a
large Russian enclave, I overheard the following brief exchange
between A, offloading the cable car, and B, staying aboard:

A. _Ne zabyvaite!_
B. _Ne zabudu!_

C. "Don't forget!"
D. "I won't!"

C-D is certainly a reasonable translation of the exchange. But, it
would probably necessitate at least a couple of paragraphs to explain
exactly what each speaker-hearer meant and what each speaker-hearer
understood, such as why it was that B used _ne zabudu_, when, if he
had said _ne budu zabyvat'_ or _budu ne zabyvat'_, to the naive
American ear, the English translation - hence, the "meaning" - would
be the same, though to a Russian, these variants may have no meaning
at all. Likewise, the difference, for a native-speaker of English,
between "come _to_ me with a knife" and "come _at_ me with a knife"
isn't easily expressed by simple translation into something that
otherwise seems to make perfect sense in another language.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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