The difficulties of translation and having sufficient means of expression and which words are culturally necessary;

Litost

Czech – Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, remarked that “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.” The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

Torschlusspanik

German – Translated literally, this word means “gate-closing panic,” but its contextual meaning refers to “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages.”

Wabi-Sabi

Japanese – Much has been written on this Japanese concept, but in a sentence, one might be able to understand it as “a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.”

L’appel du vide

French – “The call of the void” is this French expression’s literal translation, but more significantly it’s used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.

Ya’aburnee

Arabic – Both morbid and beautiful at once, this incantatory word means “You bury me,” a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.

Forelsket

 Norwegian- The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love

Meraki 

Greek- Doing something with soul, creativity, or love. It’s when you put something of yourself into what you’re doing

Tatemae and Honne 

Japanese- What you pretend to believe and what you actually believe, respectively

Waldeinsamkeit 

German- The feeling of being alone in the woods

http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-awesomely-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world/2/

http://sobadsogood.com/2012/04/29/25-words-that-simply-dont-exist-in-english/

“Give it a mortality”

“Suffering a narrow land land brought endless”

“My life is there a way of life, and that’s a stepping stone, or the people of recalls, my precious memories without leaving them there with me went off in many parts of the world to another path.”

“Like it or not, the Lord has turned a lot of night”

“The broad nature of land and preserved as there was no reason to”

“Seasons, the scent, the new sky for a long time and rock-blue grasslands, all over the world showing signs of change; so i looked in the affirmation of the natural”

“To the airport, and the pastor, returning home on the road, no one caught the gentle piano sound of the car not running”

“City passes over the unfolding right in front of her to another mystery”

“I realize that living here is to finish and go back to your place, little by little you will need to be when…each other leads to home”

“‘How did you make it?’ and is asked to recollect natural wonders and amazing, the enormity of the creator within the pearl.”

“Have fun, and don’t take it -personally, I will live for the satisfaction. However, he is not the right way, but I will look back every now -and then, you’ll have the length of me.”

I keep an extensive record of phrases within mistranslated facebook statuses from this endearing Korean student I met at my church’s Christmas party because they hold a fundamental poetry of translations and connections and interpretations and narratives and language and

I would read how her life unfolded, knowing no priors or what was truth or what was lost or masked through rendering of a faulty series of linguistic connections or gained in the half-nonsense as I saw significant. word choices that were her own but not her own, what was lived and what was meant and what I found instead:

these are some of my favorites.

“The Privileged Planet” 

http://vimeo.com/53879725

“I don’t lose my weight, my form, my skin, or my particularity. I press into the world around me and it does the same into me. I feel into it…”

Artist’s statement :Sonia Finley (Sculpture) 

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