![]() ![]() The artwork is simple and emotive, having a child-like or “homemade” look to it. But sometimes the connotations of a word in its foreign language creep back in and muddy up the waters a bit.Įach word is given a two-page spread with an explanation (including the language it’s from and whether it’s a noun, verb, etc.) on the left hand page, and a definition worked into an illustration on the other. Of course, we the readers don’t want the mundane minutia of the various connotations of words that may or may not have ostensibly direct translations, and this book does skip all that and get right to the words you never thought there would be a word for. Now, I’m not a linguist, but I think it’s fair to say that words with no direct translation are fairly common, especially when one considers a word’s connotations. ![]() But are these words as far out as they seem? ![]() The book promises a definition and illustration of more than 50 words from various languages that have no direct translation in English. ![]() I don’t know how I first came across it, but it was already in my online cart when my mother found a copy at a second-hand shop and I was prompted to finally pull the trigger. As a person who is often searching for the right word and has a tangential interest in learning single words from foreign languages to add to my speech, Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words immediately interested me. ![]()
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