From Publishers Weekly
Translation is tricky, especially when the language belongs to a people whose culture is very different from one's own. In this short but enthusiastic book, Moore, a linguist, selects from languages across the world words and phrases that are impossible to translate neatly into English. In many cases, the difficulty arises because our culture simply doesn't share the same experiences as others. For instance, the Cantonese word gagung literally means "bare sticks," but represents the growing group of men who will not be able to find a wife because China's one-child policy, and desire for sons, has reduced the proportion of women. Other untranslatable words are those used for a feeling or situation that English only describes in a roundabout way, such as the indigenous word from Tierra del Fuego, mamihlapinatapei, which connotes "an expressive and meaningful silence," romantic or otherwise. Moore ranges through 10 different groups of languages (ancient and classical, indigenous, Nordic and African among them) and breaks a few into individual tongues. He introduces each with a few entertaining anecdotes and literary quotes to provide context, and his style in the definitions is equally witty and accessible. Strangely, the entries are not alphabetized, and some have meanings that are more familiar than he implies, particularly those found in the section on Sanskrit, which is made up entirely of words that have already entered the English vocabulary, such as guru and mantra. Overall, this book will fascinate anyone who loves linguistic oddities or has ever felt "lost in translation."
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Book Description
I am glad that Peter Charles found words to enjoy in my book "In Other Words." I would also like to clarify a point, which is that his ’ suggestion of a "howler" in my book assumes a statement and a comparison which I never made, and the suggested parallel with Latin and French has no relevance here. In my text I was discussing modern Hebrew, a very different construction from biblical Hebrew, and a new language created with a twentieth century form that rests on the assimilation of influences from speakers from many different origins. For none of these speakers was Hebrew a first language, and for this reason the emergence of modern spoken Hebrew has been likened to a creolization, different only in having a modern historical literature. Academics are by no means sure of how this process came about, but there is every reason to suppose that the widespread use of Yiddish was a significant factor in the forging of modern spoken Hebrew. Some academics take a strong view on this, others a weaker one, but the evidence for Yiddish structure and lexis is all too clear in the writings of, for example, Mendele Mocher Sfarim writing at the end of the nineteenth century, and in other documented sources.
I hope this sheds some light on a subject which remains of great interest to linguists.
CJMoore
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