Lost in Translation
When one can wander from one language to another, one finds gems that are perfectly understood, but can't be put into a concrete word in another language. Sometimes, a word will make you stop. You understand perfectly the feelings the word pulls up, but there is no other word in your vocabulary which can substitute it. It just sits there, in glory and solitude, transmitting its intense feeling, hitting the language barriers all around it.
Galician has quite a few such words. The one which is the most difficult isn't even Galician, but Portuguese. Saudade is a Portuguese word which was incorporated into Galician many moons ago. There simply is no way to translate it. Two of the examples in which I have found it come to mind. One is seeing it engraved in tombstones in a Portuguese cemetery. The other is in a song by Andrés do Barro, a Galician songwriter, "Teño saudade, saudade teño de ti. Teño saudade de ti, meu Deus, teño saudade de ti." (The singer is missing someone intensely.)
To have saudade means to have intense longing and loneliness. It is the knowledge of love that will never return, whether of a place or a person. It's more than just missing a person or place; it's like missing a limb and then feeling its ghost still attached to the body. There is no one word in English that it can translate into. It can only be translated using written images.
There are others, like pailán. This one can be translated, though the English word that comes to mind isn't even English, but Yiddish. A pailán is a schmuck. It's a rustic, uneducated fool who just about always gets taken advantage of. Trump has often been called a pailán.
Then we have riquiño, so typical in parodies of Galician speakers. It means rich, but in a sense of cute, pretty, heart-warming. It's generally used for people, and has nothing to do with food being rica (delicious), nor with wealth of any kind.
There are others, such as trapalleiro. Someone who is trapalleiro will lie without any compunction. Another use for the word is someone who comes up with plans to get benefits of some kind for himself without any or little cost. It can also be a person who does things sloppily by using shortcuts and just presenting the final job with pretty make-up, even though it'll fall apart after a couple of uses. I've known a few, especially in the last sense. Unfortunately, they're out there disguised as good workmen.
We also have papaostias, a compound word which literally means, "he who eats punches." While pailán refers more to the uneducated fool, anybody else can be a papaostias, including a university dean. A papaostias is a foolish person who can easily be taken in and made use of by someone else. An idiot.
There is also an all-purpose verb, aquelar. It means to do something, without defining what that something is. It's like thingy in English, but in verb form. When one can't think of the thing's exact name in English, we say thingy, or whatchamacallit. And when one can't think of the verb in Galician, we say aquelar. "Aquelaches as entradas?" "Did you buy/see about/ask about/find/look for the tickets?"
Then there's the most famous Galician word, morriña. That is more easily translatable, and can mean nostalgia or homesickness, but with overwhelming feeling. One can have morriña for everything from a person, to a place, to a favorite food. The sense includes a sense of loss, much like saudade, but with a light at the end of the tunnel of possibly returning to that place, person, or food one is longing for. Unless it's the past, of course, for which it can also be used. At times I have a morriña for the Boston I left behind, which has changed irrevocably. At other times here, I find a whiff of the Galicia of my childhood vacations, and morriña floods me, for those times.
Then there are things that just can't be put into words in any language, like the feeling when a ray of sun pushes through rain clouds on a dark grey day, and reminds you it's still back there, and will shine again. It's a flood of hope that lights the kitchen more than the sun itself.
Galician has quite a few such words. The one which is the most difficult isn't even Galician, but Portuguese. Saudade is a Portuguese word which was incorporated into Galician many moons ago. There simply is no way to translate it. Two of the examples in which I have found it come to mind. One is seeing it engraved in tombstones in a Portuguese cemetery. The other is in a song by Andrés do Barro, a Galician songwriter, "Teño saudade, saudade teño de ti. Teño saudade de ti, meu Deus, teño saudade de ti." (The singer is missing someone intensely.)
To have saudade means to have intense longing and loneliness. It is the knowledge of love that will never return, whether of a place or a person. It's more than just missing a person or place; it's like missing a limb and then feeling its ghost still attached to the body. There is no one word in English that it can translate into. It can only be translated using written images.
There are others, like pailán. This one can be translated, though the English word that comes to mind isn't even English, but Yiddish. A pailán is a schmuck. It's a rustic, uneducated fool who just about always gets taken advantage of. Trump has often been called a pailán.
Then we have riquiño, so typical in parodies of Galician speakers. It means rich, but in a sense of cute, pretty, heart-warming. It's generally used for people, and has nothing to do with food being rica (delicious), nor with wealth of any kind.
There are others, such as trapalleiro. Someone who is trapalleiro will lie without any compunction. Another use for the word is someone who comes up with plans to get benefits of some kind for himself without any or little cost. It can also be a person who does things sloppily by using shortcuts and just presenting the final job with pretty make-up, even though it'll fall apart after a couple of uses. I've known a few, especially in the last sense. Unfortunately, they're out there disguised as good workmen.
We also have papaostias, a compound word which literally means, "he who eats punches." While pailán refers more to the uneducated fool, anybody else can be a papaostias, including a university dean. A papaostias is a foolish person who can easily be taken in and made use of by someone else. An idiot.
There is also an all-purpose verb, aquelar. It means to do something, without defining what that something is. It's like thingy in English, but in verb form. When one can't think of the thing's exact name in English, we say thingy, or whatchamacallit. And when one can't think of the verb in Galician, we say aquelar. "Aquelaches as entradas?" "Did you buy/see about/ask about/find/look for the tickets?"
Then there's the most famous Galician word, morriña. That is more easily translatable, and can mean nostalgia or homesickness, but with overwhelming feeling. One can have morriña for everything from a person, to a place, to a favorite food. The sense includes a sense of loss, much like saudade, but with a light at the end of the tunnel of possibly returning to that place, person, or food one is longing for. Unless it's the past, of course, for which it can also be used. At times I have a morriña for the Boston I left behind, which has changed irrevocably. At other times here, I find a whiff of the Galicia of my childhood vacations, and morriña floods me, for those times.
Then there are things that just can't be put into words in any language, like the feeling when a ray of sun pushes through rain clouds on a dark grey day, and reminds you it's still back there, and will shine again. It's a flood of hope that lights the kitchen more than the sun itself.
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