Dopers, does the word “groove” translate well into any other language that you are fluent in?
It’s such a, well, groovy word. Literally, it’s a kind of notch, but it’s also a metaphorical notch, your place in life, or in a certain context, as in finding your groove. And finding your groove or getting your groove on also works really well when you are rocking out or dancing up a storm, given the groove in vinyl records. All these meaning seem to synergize in a cool way in English. Is there a comparable term in other languages?
In Spain we have vena (vein) for some of them; it refers to mineral veins, not bodily ones. Estar en vena (to be in a vein, to have struck a vein) can mean being in the zone, having gotten into the groove… but, like so many other things in Spanish, it can also be used ironically for someone who keeps putting his foot into his mouth.
We don’t have an adjective equivalent to groovy and derived from vena; I’ve heard onda used in the expression ¡qué onda!, which can be translated as “that’s groovy!”, although the grammar is different.
There isn’t much point to translating most slang literally. Even if you’re looking for a interpretative translation, it can be difficult to catch the exact same connotation, because generally slang arises from specific cultural contexts. For this reason, the challenge of the “translation” is not in identifying the “correct” word, but rather in conveying the context. Often that context is not a shared experience of the two language populations.
