English and the Romance languages have the same word here, although German has ‘Tier’, which feels closer to ‘beast’. In what follows I evoke the arguments and implications of a few words in the Dictionary.Īnimal. How does one translate a book about untranslatable terms? With fear and trembling, and a dose of hope. But we feel we could do better and that’s why we keep trying. To be precise, we don’t always fail, sometimes we succeed rather well. It is not what we can’t or don’t translate but what we can’t stop trying and failing to translate. Barbara Cassin, the inventor and editor of the French book on which this English edition is based, and the continuing lively mind behind the whole enterprise, offers a compelling definition of what an untranslatable word or phrase is. The Dictionary of Untranslatables takes the practice of translation as an invitation to understand ourselves and our cultures better.
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