See all those languages up there? We translate Global Voices stories to make the world's citizen media available to everyone.

Learn more about Lingua Translation  »
All topics 

Untranslatable Words Graphically Explained

Written byGabriela García Calderón Orbe
Translated byGabriela García Calderón

Translations

Read this post in Français, Swahili, Español
Translation posted 1 June 2014 6:00 GMT

The web site Pijamasurf [es] shares the curious “30 untraslatable word list” the artist Anjana Iyer [en] tried to capture on humorous illustrations. Like for instance:

Bakku- shan (Japanese)
A beautiful girl… as long as she's being viewed from behind.

You can find the list here.

Categories

Topics
Creative Commons License
Written byGabriela García Calderón Orbe
Translated byGabriela García Calderón

Support our work

Global Voices stands out as one of the earliest and strongest examples of how media committed to building community and defending human rights can positively influence how people experience events happening beyond their own communities and national borders.

Please consider making a donation to help us continue this work.

Donate now

Recent Citizen Media Stories

More »

Top World Stories

Start the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.

This site is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Please read our attribution policy to learn about freely redistributing our work Creative Commons License Some Rights Reserved