Translation is often presented as an almost scientific process, in which a text is converted from one language to another in the most straightforward manner possible. Translators will be the first to tell you, however, that itâs far from that simple. Give any two people the same paragraph to translate, and the end result will never be exactly the same. Literary translation, then, is much more an art than a science, and finding the solution to a tricky translation can take quite a bit of time and effort. In fact, there are some sentences in literature that are considered impossible to translate.
The concept of something being untranslatable should be familiar, though itâs usually a bit of a misnomer. The German word Schadenfreude is called âuntranslatableâ because there is no single word in English that means the same thing, but you can definitely translate it to âthe feeling of joy when someone else feels pain.â In literature, though, “untranslatable” presents more of a challenge. It can be difficult to keep all of the nuance in translation, and there can be strong disagreements. Let’s look at a few sentences and phrases that are “impossible to translate” â or at least impossible to translate without controversy â to see how people deal with the messiness of language and literature.
Beowulf is the first epic in Old English, but a modern reader would have a very hard time understanding its eighth century language today. The English language has changed so much that its grammar and vocabulary are nearly impenetrable. The poem presents problems to the 21st century translator in its very first word: HwĂŚt. While there are a number of theories, itâs unclear what exactly this one-word sentence is meant to convey.
A popular interpretation is that itâs an interjection, meant to call the listenerâs attention. After all, Beowulf started in the oral tradition being written down. This theory goes all the way back to the Brothers Grimm, who wrote about the text. Translators have used a number of different interjections to try to capture its meaning: John Earle used âWhat ho!â in 1879, Seamus Heaney used âSo!â in 1999, and Maria Dahvana Headley used the very modern-sounding âBro!â in 2023.
While this is now the convention for translators working on Beowulf, there are also those who believe that hwĂŚt isnât an interjection at all. Historical linguist George Walkden argues that it isnât its own sentence, and is instead the first word in a longer sentence. Instead of translating it âListen! We have heard of the might of the kings,â he says it is more correctly âHow we have heard of the might of the kings.â While this may seem like a small difference, it continues to attract attention because Beowulf is the very beginning of Englishâs literary life. This first word of the poem, then, is the first word of everything thatâs come after.
The most divisive line of LâEtranger (The Stranger) is also probably its very first: Aujourdâhui, maman est morte. Maybe itâs because the first sentence is central to setting the tone for all that comes after, or maybe itâs just the primacy effect taking hold. In any case, itâs the first words you read from a strangely disconnected narrator who floats through the events in his life, barely affected by tragedy or the fact that he murders another man. Setting the right tone to enter this, then, is important.
The most common translation for this first line is âMother died today.â It is probably the simplest, most natural-sounding in English. Yet in a New Yorker article, writer Ryan Bloom says that it fails to capture the original Frenchâs tone. For one thing, it rearranges the sentence, and a word-for-word translation would be âToday, mother has died.â It doesnât sound as casual, but maybe that is for the better. Another thing he takes issue with, though, is translating maman as âmother.â English has many words for someoneâs female parent, and âmotherâ is the most formal option. What changes, then, if it becomes âMama died todayâ or âMom died todayâ?
Bloom decides the âcorrectâ translation would be âToday, Maman died.â It more closely reflects the original grammar, and also uses the French âMamanâ to try to more closely convey the characterâs attitude toward his mother. To say that there is one âcorrectâ translation is to oversimplify, however, and another translator could quibble with any number of Bloomâs choices.
As far as literary controversies go, Elena Ferranteâs novels are not particularly divisive. Theyâre new enough that thereâs only one English translation thus far, and the consensus is that translator Ann Goldsteinâs work on them is excellent. Goldstein herself, however, has talked about the difficulties of translation, and has highlighted some of the more troublesome sentences. One of the hardest parts of translating Ferrante, Goldstein has written, is that she uses the Neapolitan dialect quite a bit in her writing. Hereâs one sentence she highlights in a Vulture article from Ferranteâs The Lying Life of Adults:
Mia zia allora si rivolse di scatto a questâultimo e gli disse che gli avrebbe tagliato il pesce â usò proprio quel vocabolo, in dialetto, con voce tranquilla, brandendo le forbici â se continuava a ridere.
And hereâs how Goldstein decided to translate it:
My aunt turned to him abruptly and said she would cut off his pesceâshe used precisely that dialect word, pesce, fish, in a calm voice, brandishing the scissorsâif he kept laughing.
This word calls special attention to the use of a word in dialect, so Goldstein decided the best thing to do was to keep pesce in its original Italian and provide the English direct translation â âfishâ â while not explicitly writing out what the aunt is actually referring to: genitals. Goldstein considered substituting an English slang word, but decided that this would obscure how this word is being used. The use of dialect conveys more than just a wordâs meaning, it also reveals a characterâs background, attitudes and more. Slang very rarely has a simple equivalent in other languages, so it’s impossible to translate without using other techniques to convey all this information.
Letâs go way back in time for this final example. These two works have been translated so many times, you could probably pick any sentence and discover a treasure trove of translation trivia. To focus on just one phrase that has caused consternation for hundreds if not thousands of years, we can look at oĂŽnops pĂłntos.
The phrase literally means âwine-faced sea.â For the most part, translators go with the slightly adjusted âwine-dark sea.â The translation trouble isnât so much in the words themselves, but in the fact that its meaning doesnât make much sense. What does it mean for a sea to be âwine darkâ? Thinking about it has spawned a number of hypotheses. Perhaps there was an algae outbreak in the Aegean Sea during Homerâs lifetime that colored the water with a reddish hue. Maybe there was a wine drunk by the Greeks that was actually blue. One of the more outlandish is that the Ancient Greeks actually saw color differently than us modern humans, and so to Homer, a red wine and a dark sea looked pretty much the same.
None of these are verifiable â in fact theyâre somewhat unlikely â and the simplest answer might just be that it was a poetic phrase that wasnât meant to be taken so literally. It shows, though, just how impossible to translate certain phrases can be, particularly when itâs a text where much of the context is lost to time. Is âwine-dark seaâ the best possible English version of the phrase to express what Homer wanted to express? Itâs impossible to know. We do know that itâll provide discussion fodder for many more centuries to come.
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