mello hates you ([info]telophase) wrote,
@ 2008-05-08 12:13:00
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Entry tags:linkblogging

From the sublime to the creepy
Jeffrey Friedl goes camping with his family in Japan, and photographs a beautiful sunset.

The top ten non-English words voted hardest to translate

From Bug Girl's Blog: I have pubic lice in my mailbox Or, as it turns out, perhaps not. "[Also, a tip: if you walk into your new workplace brandishing a container of putative pubic lice and sand, you may want to provide a more detailed back story than "I bought them on the internet." Just some advice.]"


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[info]buymeaclue
2008-05-08 05:21 pm UTC (link)

The top ten non-English words voted hardest to translate

This is going to drive me crazy for the rest of the day, as I wonder how accurate (or in-) the descriptions of meaning are.

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[info]telophase
2008-05-08 05:23 pm UTC (link)
7 saudade [Portuguese for a certain type of longing]

8 selathirupavar [Tamil for a certain type of truancy]

I'm going to be wondering just exactly what types of truancy and longing those are, and why they're so important as to require special words.

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[info]buymeaclue
2008-05-08 05:25 pm UTC (link)
Exactly!

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[info]cerusee
2008-05-08 07:22 pm UTC (link)
Whimsy is hard to translate? Really? Dang.

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[info]darksumomo
2008-05-08 07:28 pm UTC (link)
shlimazl [Yiddish for a chronically unlucky person]

Lucky for me, I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. I didn't ever bother to translate this word into English. I used the Yiddish instead.

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[info]chomiji
2008-05-08 07:28 pm UTC (link)

Heh ... re: pochemuchka

Pochemu = "why" (ex.: "Pochemu ti khochesh kasha?" = "Why do you want buckwheat groats?")

-chka or -shka = diminutive ending, specifically, a pejorative diminutive ("Sasha" = affectionate nickname for Alexander, "Sashka" = insulting nickname for Alexander).

XD



Edited at 2008-05-08 07:29 pm UTC

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[info]re_weird
2008-05-09 04:49 am UTC (link)
Yes, I saw that too. Almost literally, "a why-person"! XD

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[info]m00nface
2008-05-08 10:37 pm UTC (link)
I wonder why they focused on just naa rather than ne, which - as far as I can tell - is used in the same way and over more of Japan...

And I want to know what makes an Albanian klloshar different from an English loser.

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[info]ninja_tech
2008-05-08 10:47 pm UTC (link)
The pubic lice link cracked me up. I about fell out of my chair laughing when I read the handwritten instructions. Wow. Just...wow. Were those bits of pubic hair in the sand with the eggs? Ew. Thanks for the laugh!

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