"Lost in Translation" -- words that have no easy equivalent in English

In My Humble Opinion
121

“Cousin,” when unqualified, means either:

(1) first cousin
or
(2) any person who is an XN cousin XN times removed
or
(3) any relative of the same generation as the speaker where the actual relationship is complicated.

I think most English speakers assume meaning #1, but are prepared to accept meaning #2 and #3 in context. I am close to a second cousin once removed; I typically refer to him as a cousin or an uncle, depending on my mood. I find that most people who aren’t into genealogy don’t understand the “removed”s and also don’t care, so “cousin” is the only thing left.

122

I was very close to my fifth cousin and even considered proposing to her; we probably wouldn’t have known that we were even related, had our dads not grown up together.

123

In my experience, the term for someone who isn’t my immediate cousin is usually “second cousin,” with maybe “third cousin” in there, too, if the relation is distant enough. Those terms aren’t used in their exact definition except when dealing with genealogical trees. But “cousin” by itself isn’t used that much beyond first cousins, except if there’s some sort of special relationship–ala calling someone your brother or sister who aren’t actually your bother or sister. Or using “aunt” or “uncle” for just a friend of your parents who is always around.

124

Quite the opposite, in my case: We’re up to somewhere around 150 descendants of my grandparents, now. We talk of nth cousins r times removed routinely, because otherwise, it’s impossible to keep track of whom you’re talking about.

In contexts where I don’t want to get into that level of detail, or where there are many people involved all of whom are different relations (such as the gathering I was at yesterday, which included an elder first cousin once removed of mine, several second cousins, a second cousin once removed, and a second cousin twice removed), I just use the word “kin”.

125

Yeah, I had to figure this out, because I knew I was fairly closely related to the poet, Robinson Jeffers. I figured out that he was my first cousin three times removed (he and my great-grandmother were first cousins). And Ancestry.com agreed with me.

126

I got dinner with my Cousin Dan last night. I always have referred to him as my cousin. Our mothers are first cousins so we are second cousins but I have never made the distinction. I have always referred to Dan’s mom as my cousin with no qualifier even though she is my first cousin once removed.

I don’t have any first cousins if that matters.

127

“Pech” the Dutch word meaning the opposite of lucky.
Bad luck, unlucky: I don’t think that English has an equivalent.

128

“Ganbatte Kudasai” is a super-common phrase in Japanese that has a lot of translations, like “hang in there” or “don’t give up” or “be strong.” The literal meaning is something like “please be tough.”

@TokyoBayer what would your translation be?

129

Quick answer: “Good luck!” (Or, “Break a leg!” in theater.)

Longer explanation:

There isn’t a good literal translation for most cases, because the actual words do mean “hang in here”, “do your best”, “work hard”, etc.

However, as Robert Whiting notes in the definitive book on gaijin players in Japanese baseball, You Gotta Have Wa, it’s often said to professional athletes, and when the interpreters would translate that into something like “Do your best!” the Western players would universally react negatively because it’s insulting to tell a professional to best because it’s assumed that professionals will do their best and all that remains is wishing them good luck.

After the interpreters discovered this cultural difference and started saying “Good luck!” the gaijin player’s face light up, they would smile and say thank you, similar to what a Japanese player would do when told to “gambaru.”

It’s a cultural transaction, where the speaker is conveying a cultural expectation to the listener, rather than providing lim

As I explain to people, this can be generalized to adults, because it’s the grown up thing to do one’s best and all that people need is a bit of luck.

Coaches (and overbearing sports parents) can encourage their athletes (children) to excel, but one of the few times this would be appropriate.

I participate on a Japanese / English language exchange site and Japanese will often say “I’ll work hard at my job today.” 今日、仕事を頑張ります。Kyo, shigoto wo gambarimasu . but that’s not something a native English speaker would say. There may be particular times when we would say, “I have to bust @ss today” but that’s an exception rather than a rule.

Polite fictions: why Japanese and Americans seem rude to each other is an older book, but it also mentions this phrase and covers the cultural aspects of it. (IIRC)

Another one is otsukaresama, “honorable tired person” and that’s not transalatable, either.

130

“Pech” has the same meaning in German, and there’s another German word with no direct equivalent in English. “Satt” is the opposite of “hungry” (hungrig), and while the English translation to “Ich bin satt” would be “I’m full”, “satt” exclusively means “not hungry”, while “full” of course has a much broader meaning. Interestingly, there’s no German equivalent word for “not thirsty”, so there was a competition in 1999 by Duden, the publisher of THE German dictionary, and Lipton (tea company), to find a new word for it. It came up with “sitt”, but it never caught on.

131

There was a large gap between the birth of my aunt and my father, so I ended up with a cousin who was only a couple years younger than my father. He was always called ‘uncle Jim’ as it seemed to fit better than cousin Jim.

132

That’s interesting – I usually find cousins once removed tend to take on a uncle/aunt-nephew/niece sort of colloquial naming around here as the generational remove is more important than the cousin-ness, I guess. (Though it’s more the younger generation calling the older uncle/aunt than the older calling the younger nephew/niece from what I noticed.)

133

Did you mean to say more here?

And I would interested to read your best-possible English interpretation of the phrase “honorable tired person.”

134

Thank you for the great info!

Me too!

135

Yeah.

It’s a cultural transaction, where the speaker is conveying a cultural expectation to the listener, rather than providing unique information such as what time dinner will be.

It’s a reinforcement of a cultural bonding, or at least a form of a set expression, but at any rate, it’s not intended to indicate a necessity for the listener to be reminded that they must do their best any more that wishing someone luck actually does anything to increase the actual percentage of a better outcome.

OK, I’ll do that tomorrow.

136

I’m going to guess it’s not the generational remove so much as the chronological age. Which in a lot of cases is the same but not always - I had a couple of first cousins who sometimes called me “aunt” when they were little , but I’m 14 to 18 years older than they are. In this case it wasn’t a family tradition sort of thing - in my family, we called cousins by their first names regardless of their generation or age. It’s just that these cousins are so much younger than me that they were confused about the relationship when they were young.

137

Actually, yes, sorry. Difference in age is the more important factor, rather than actual generational remove.

138

In English, “sated” is pretty close.

139

Early in my career I worked a fair amount with Japanese colleagues, customers and vendors and visited Japan a few times. I was instructed that wishing a Japanese person “good luck” could be taken wrong. It would be like saying “you are unlikely to succeed and will need a lucky break for it to happen”.

140

お疲れ様 otsukaresama , honorable tired person, is said to people in your same group when they finish work, an event, a project, a race or pretty much anything.

If you leave the office first, you say お先に失礼しますosaki ni shitsurei shimasu (Excuse me for being rude to leave first).

All cultures have differences between in groups and outgroups, but Japanese take that to the nth degree.

お疲れ様 otsukaresama, “honorable tired person” is another reinforcement of the group cohesiveness.

My wife works for a small Taiwanese company, where everyone is also fluent in Japanese, and they will talk in rapid Chinese, which is beyond my ability to understand, but then they throw in the expressions such as “otsukaresama”, yoroshiku onegaishimasu, otsukaresama, etc.

I’ve asked my wife about it, and she says she usually doesn’t notice she’s doing that.