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Rutabaga, or swede, as the Brits call it, is not the only Swedish import into English (originally rotabagge, a dialect word from Västergötland), moped and ombudsman being a couple of examples. And because English and Swedish tend to share a number of lexical similarities and near cognates, translators working in this combination should always be vigilant when dealing with this language pair.

A glaring example – and quite an eye opener a couple of weeks ago as I was working on a text filled with quotations in Swedish – is the idiom att falla mellan stolarna or att falla mellan två stolar, which conveys the idea of shirking responsibilities or passing the buck. Confusingly, the English cliché fall between two stools looks awfully similar, but ay, there’s the rub. In English it means to fail to reconcile two conflicting courses of action. Apparently not so på svenska.

To make matters worse, other Scandinavian languages, seem to agree with the English meaning. At falle mellom to stoler in Norwegian does actually mean to fall between two stools and the expression seems to date back to the 14th-century Danish scholar Peder Laale, who apparently was so keen on proverbs that he collected a whopping 1200, including ” Mellom thwo sthoolæ faller artz paa iordhe” as it was spelled in medieval Danish. Modern Danish has sætte sig mellem to stole, which means to put oneself in an awkward situation. Again. quite close to the English meaning.

So why has Swedish taken a detour? Not sure. But it goes to show that as a translator, you should never let your guard down and if you don’t want to appear gullible, do your research first, or else you may end up spending the rest of your days eating rutabaga.

Bookstores – both online and of the brick-and-mortar kind – are chock-full of reference books on grammar. vocabulary, idioms and proverbs. These books and dictionaries tend to illustrate their meaning or – in their bilingual versions – compare or contrast commonalities between languages or, at best, they might contemplate the false cognates that trip up language learners and translators alike. Or they might find similar idioms in the receiving culture. I find it, however, far more fascinating to seek out those idioms, words or concepts that are seemingly untranslatable and that shed some precious light on how a certain culture thinks and expresses itself.

This is of course a wide-reaching area in translation studies and one that cannot be neatly organized since lexical gaps in a given language become conspicuous especially during the translation process.

For instance, some American or English idioms simply don’t exist in Italian. One of my favorites is the elephant in the room, which is a fairly recent coinage. It has now become widespread across the English-speaking world, but it seems other languages lack this idea. Italian does have il convitato di pietra, but it refers more to an ominous presence rather than a problem no one wants to address. Close, but no cigar, I suppose.

Similarly, I find it peculiar that a coffee-imbued culture like Italy does not seem to have a concept like the American (via the now outdated German) kaffeeklatsch. The Swedes have fika, the Danes and Norwegians kaffeslabberas. It appears that Italian can’t stretch beyond a simple caffè.  I guess ‘Prendiamo un caffè?’ already carries the same implications.

What about roadkill? Why hasn’t anyone come up with something niftier than carcassa di animale investito? Is Italian less flexible than English in creating words and concepts?

On the other hand, why does Italian go out of its way to come up with consuocero (son’s or daughter’s father-in-law), but draws no distinction between nephew/niece and grandson/granddaughter, both being nipote. Pretty odd for a family-oriented culture.

And speaking of odd, the Dutch must have some of the wackiest expressions in Europe. Een waarheid als een koe (literally a truth like a cow) is a self-evident truth, a truism, which can of course be paraphrased quite easily, though a translator can’t help but wonder why this idiom has come into being. (We know how, but not why.)

The Danes (and the Norwegians) also offer plenty of zany idioms whose origins seem to have been lost to time. And  at skyde papegøjen – it is safe to say – could easily take the cake as far as I am concerned. Meaning literally ‘to shoot the parrot’, it means to be extremely lucky or to have hit the jackpot. The origin of this expression dates back to 13th-century France but, to the best of my knowledge, the French have since decided to leave their perroquets alone.

It recently dawned on me why I often stumble into translation conundrums and over words or phrases that seem at first quite trivial, but are in fact tricky to translate into the target language. The short answer is that some words or expressions are culture-specific and that striving to find an equivalent at all costs will, more often than not, bear no fruit.

In an extract from Thinking Italian translation that I used in my translation class last week, the authors present a ST advertising text in which the first line reads: “Complimenti! Lei ha scelto le calzature X…” and the (awkwardly) attempted TT translation: “Compliments! You choosed the X shoes…”. The book does not offer any suggestions on how the ST ought to be translated, but uses it instead as an example to broach the wider subject of translation loss and cultural transposition. A fascinating area of translation studies.

As I set about translating the Italian text into English, I immediately came to a screeching halt: Compliments? Congratulations? Good job? Surely purchasing a pair of shoes – no matter how expensive or finely crafted – does not warrant such brouhaha. It is simply not expected in English. It sounds excessive. And it might even have other implications. Finally! You can now afford a pair of shoes. You’ve got it made, Jack!

Congratulations on your purchase! may be heard when buying a house or an expensive car. Still, it reeks of insincere pat-on-the-back small talk that adds very little to communication. And, in any case, no one would dream of congratulating a customer on buying a head of lettuce at the local market or a pair of shoes in a department store.

In English a “thank you for your purchase’ is all you need, really. I checked with a German friend and he said ‘gute Wahl’ would be in order but ‘ohne Kompliment’. When I asked my Finnish colleague, I could hear her have an inner chuckle when she blurted a ‘Grattis till dina nya Ecco skor’ in attempting a Swedish translation.

So why complimenti is all right in Italian? Perhaps because it is the land of flattery and of la bella figura. Perhaps because it goes hand in hand with the level of formality and variety of honorifics commonly used in everyday speech. Modern English has done away with grammar-based honorifics. Italian, on the other hand, is a language in love with its navel-gazing superlatives and academic and professional titles. After all, if an Italian professor – but only a full professor, or ordinario – is styled as ‘Chiarissimo’ , then it stands to reason that Complimenti vivissimi is the least you can expect when purchasing a pair of Ferragamo shoes.

J’adore bouquiner dans les librairies de seconde main à la recherche d’un fruit d’un heureux hasard. Et ce hasard m’a conduit dans le quartier d’Ixelles à Bruxelles, où je suis tombé sur la librairie Nijinski. Une de ces librairies où on passe volontiers des heures dans l’espoir de trouver ce dont on n’a pas vraiment besoin.

C’était chez Nijinski que j’ai acheté mon premier Larousse Classique (édition 1957), un dictionnaire avec des cartes et des illustrions en couleurs, un de ces dictionnaires encyclopédiques qui incluent des informations sur la géographie, l’histoire et les arts. En feuilletant ce dictionnaire, j’imagine la joie des enfants et des étudiants qui dans les années cinquante apprenaient d’une façon plus tactile et plus méticuleuse, si lointaine des appareils électroniques d’aujourd’hui. Bref, moins fatigante.

Le Larousse Classique – comme la plupart des vieux dictionnaires – est un petit trésor qui vaut la peine de lire de temps en temps pour noter ce qui a changé. Ce qui n’est plus là. Les mots désuets, les nations disparues, les personnages et les événements qui étaient importants en 1957 et qui ne le sont plus en 2019.

Saya belajar bahasa Indonesia pada waktu saya di Universitas, dan bersama bahasa, saya pun mengikuti kursus linguistik. Pengajar saya adalah seorang pria yang luar biasa. Dia lahir di pulau Sumatra dan sering menghibur mahasiswanya dengan bercerita tentang Indonesia ketika Indonesia di bawah kekuasaan Belanda serta kejadian-kejadian selama Perang Dunia II.

Beberapa tahun kemudian saya mendapat kesempatan untuk bekerja di Jakarta. Sesudah pindah ke Indonesia barulah saya menemukan bahwa Bahasa Indonesia yang dulu saya diajari di Eropa berbeda sekali dengan Bahasa ‘Indonesia’ yang dipakai orang awam khususnya orang Jakarta yang juga dikenal dengan nama Betawi. Memang kedua bahasa tersebut berlainan sekali!

Namun, hal yang membuat saya senang selama di Jakarta – begitu pula di Singapura – adalah toko-toko buku di mana saya membeli banyak kamus Bahasa Indonesia yang judulnya saya ingin berbagi di sini dengan pemelajar-pemelajar Bahasa Indonesia.

Selemat belajar!

Yang berikut adalah beberapa antara kamus-kamus Bahasa Indonesia yang menurut saya paling bagus.

Perché alcuni di noi sono catturati dal suono di alcune parole? Perché alcune parole hanno un potere acustico che penetra nell’immaginario in maniera più prorompente in una lingua e non in un’altra? Sono interrogativi che non trovano una facile risposta. La psiche è a volte insondabile o forse alcuni suoni la raggiungono inspiegabilmente per poi scatenare delle reazioni del tutto individuali e del tutto uniche. Per coloro che parlano più di una lingua sarà forse capitato di trovare il suono di alcune parole suadente o addirittura inebriante e, se paragonato all’equivalente in un’altra lingua, il suono della medesima parola sarà magari risultato neutro o addirittura piatto.

La mia mente è spontaneamente sedotta da esperienze sinestetiche causate da parole e suoni, spesso in una combinazione di piacere ortografico e fonetico. Solo di recente ho notato il motivo per cui certe parole in una determinata lingua mi attraggono maggiormente rispetto al loro equivalente in un’altra. Quasi sempre per una certa immagine mentale che scaturisce dalla combinazione grafica o l’accostamento dei suoni. Perché dunque pappagallo in italiano è una parola che mi provoca allegria e colore e simpatia mentre parrot in inglese mi lascia indifferente? E perché fenicottero in italiano mi appare come un animale meccanico e sbiadito, mentre flamingo in inglese mi accende la mente con un tripudio di colori e tropicalità?

Non saprei dare una risposta certa.

Ascoltando il nome della pianta jacaranda in varie lingue, ho la sindacabile certezza che questa parola perda di fascino quando viene pronunciata in inglese, spagnolo, tedesco o italiano, ma scateni un suono altamente seduttivo se pronunciato in portoghese o in francese. Torneremo sull’argomento.

Uno degli aspetti linguistici più interessanti di ogni lingua naturale è la volontà di associare a un particolare verbo il suono emesso da ciascun animale. L’italiano ne è sorprendentemente ricco, specie in ambito ornitologico, dove forse qui più che altrove si trovano gli animali più canterini. Tra i verbi che stuzzicano maggiormente la mia immaginazione, e che presentano a volte al traduttore o alla traduttrice dei grattacapi non indifferenti, vorrei ricordarne alcuni:

• l’avvoltoio pulpa
• il gufo bubola
• il tacchino gloglotta
• il furetto potpotta
• l’orso ruglia  (o con un termine più letterario bruisce)
• il pettirosso spittina ( un toscanismo che vale la pena importare)
• il pavone paupula
• la giraffa landisce
• il giaguaro brontola
• il cane ustola (ma non quando abbaia o latra)
• il corvo crocida o gracchia

Da notare che la rete è piena di queste liste, ma vanno spulciate bene perché non sempre sono attendibili. Ad esempio il verso del coccodrillo sembra eludere qualsiasi definizione. Alcuni siti parlano di muggire, nitrire o addirittura trimbulare (smentito da Treccani). Sono andato ad ascoltare il verso emesso da alligatori e coccodrilli e non mi sembra né un muggito né un nitrito. In inglese viene definito come un ruggito e forse l’inglese ci si avvicina. L’italiano fa brontolare il giaguaro e il brontolio ben si adatterebbe anche al coccodrillo quando viene disturbato.

Der er tre norske ord jeg synes meget om. Det første er yre (støvregne på dansk), og yr/regnyr som substantiv, der stammer fra oldnordisk men det åbenbart er gået tabt i dansk. Duskregn, tåkeregn er også fine ord der betyder det samme. Fransk har bruiner og engelsk svinger fra Scotch mist til drizzle, men yr er vejrforhold mellem tågedis og småregn, så måske nærmer det sig ikke præcist ordet drizzle. Italiensk har piovigginare,  spansk lloviznar og portugisisk chuviscar, men de er jo synonymer for drizzle. Måske siger et billede mere end 1000 ord.

Andet ord fra norsk jeg kan godt lide er romjul, som ikke findes på dansk. Romjul er tiden efter anden juledag til og med nytårsaften. Svensk har mellandagarna, men tilsyneladende har dansk ikke 🙁

Det tredje norske ord er dugnad (gjøre noe på dugnad), et begreb der betyder frivilligt arbejde for fælleskabet eller naboer og som – ikke overraskende – må findes i Norge og i andre lande men ikke, for eksempel, i Italien. Antageligt fordi kultuspecifikke ord afspejler nogle elementer i visse sprog der har skabt dem?

Næste gang snakker vi om ‘harry’ og ‘uting’. Så bli’ ved med at læse!