Lost in translation

When you fly on an Emirates flight, they are always very keen to tell you the number of languages that the crew members are able to speak between them. I guess that is a good way to make as many people as possible feel at home. Language is a subject that I find fascinating and yet it is also something that is not really required on a plane. You do not need to speak someone’s language to know whether they are a nice person or not. The acid test, I always think, is with regard to the reclining of seats. I don’t have a problem with it – it is your right to do it – but I firmly believe that it is impolite to do it at meal times. People who do not think of it are self-centred and rude. One of the joys of travelling is trying to understand the way other nations and races do things and I have also found it fascinating when one finds words that are “lost in translation”. There are some things that simply do not translate word-to-word and you require a phrase (or even a paragraph) to explain what they mean. I have found that many of these untranslatable words relate to specific emotional states, good and bad, which is why one can get the gist of an explanation without having a single word. Some will tell you that the Danish hyggelig means cosy or homely, but I am told that this does not convey the full nature of the word that implies not simply warmth and a good feeling but also friendship, fire and good  beer. The Germans have schunkeln, which is apparently a verb that relates to swaying from side to side, in time to music, while linking arms with the people on either side of you. The English (and their cousins, who talk in similar fashion) do not have a word for schadenfreude and so borrow the German one for why people laugh at the misfortunes of others. The Germans also have the splendid backpfeifengesicht, which is a descriptive word for a face that needs to be punched. The Russians seem to brood rather a lot and have words for a depth of despair that others do not feel: toska is feeling of great anguish, without any obvious cause. The Germans have a word that describes the feeling of being lost in a great forest, waldeinsamkeit, which is apparently a very specific kind of terror. The Portuguese have the evocative saudade, a mournful feeling of longing for something or someone that you have loved and lost, while the Japanese have wabi-sabi, which is the peaceful acceptance of the natural cycle of life, finding beauty in its imperfections. Further afield, one finds similar words that capture very specific things. In Yagan, the local patois of Tierra del Fuego, in Argentina, they use the word mamihlapinatapei to describe the meaningful look that is shared between two people who want to do the same thing, but are reluctant to make the first move. While the word ilunga in the Tshiluba language in the Congo has been deemed as the world’s most difficult word to translate as it means a person who is unwilling to forgive a third slight (but will put up with two). Another personal favourite is naa, which is a regional expression in the Kansai district of Japan, which is used when you agree with someone. The Japanese also have words for looking worse after a haircut (age-otori) and for the dappled effect that is created when sunlight filters through the leaves of trees (komorebi). The Italians have a very specific word for an old woman who is dedicated to cats (una gattara), while islands in the Pacific also provide us with such useful words as papakata, which on the Cook Islands means having one leg longer (or shorter) than the other; or mokita, which in the Kilivila language of the Trobriand Islands, means “the great truth that we all know about but agree not to talk about”. The best translation I can think of for that is “the elephant in the room”, an American idiom that means that there is something obvious to everyone that is deliberately ignored to avoid trouble. There was a report yesterday in the Shanghai Daily newspaper in China that had a touch of elephantine mokita about it. The story was about the decline in the pulling power of Formula 1 in the Chinese market, following a crowd that was smaller than in 2014. The marketing manager of the race promotion company, a Mr Yang Yibin, reckoned this was caused by big teams dominating too much and smaller teams being unable to make a sensible challenge. Mr Yang said that the current Chinese GP contract runs until after the 2017 event, but added that changes need to be made in the sport if the deal is to be extended. “Maybe we can expect something new when we go into the post-Bernie era,” he said, saying the unsayable. In F1 circles these days there is a lot of mamihlapinatapei with regard to the need for change in F1… and it seems sometimes that everyone wants to see a little more wabi-sabi from the Formula 1 group. Until that happens, however, we are in for more waldeinsamkeit and less hyggelig. The members of the F1 circus are now either in Bahrain,  getting everything ready for the race, or sitting by swimming pools, or in Dubai, waiting to go to Bahrain. Only the real lunatics (and those with cheap tickets) have gone back to Europe for 36 hours…