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In the process of translation, translators/interpreters always scratch their heads to juice out the most fitting words in order to precisely express what they intend to convey. How can we solve it? Well, there are several ways to decide which word would fit best. One of them is to find out the meaning of the word from the source language, of course, but there’s also the context of what’s being said.

It is known to all that the goal of all translations is “to produce in a different language the same effect as the source discourse and poetic discourse is said to aim at producing an aesthetic effect.” The predominant purpose is to express as precisely as possible the full force and meaning of every word, as well as the turn of phrase in the original; while, the other purpose is to produce a result that does not read like a translation at all, but rather moves in its new dress with the same ease as in its native rendering. In the hands of a good translator neither of these two approaches can ever be entirely ignored.

For instances that the source word has no translation to the target language, the best course of action in this case, would be to simply explain what the word means, since there’s no literal translation for it. For example, one of these words is Chinese “金砖”. “金砖”, literally means “bricks made of gold”, but in English, “金砖” means “something that looks valuable, but is in fact worthless” , so for this word, there is no precise English translation, perhaps because there is no cultural equivalent. Examples like this are waldeinsamkeit in Germany, Culaccino in Italian, Komorebi in Japanese, and Pochemuchka in Russian. For these words, even though concepts cannot be properly explained across cultures, we can cross language barriers by explaining what they actually mean. Because words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us, nowhere do they touch upon the absolute truth.