# "Think outside the box" in other languages **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 27, 2024, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401 "2024-06-27T11:47:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/1 "2024-06-27T11:47:37Z")
The clichéd expression “to think outside the box” has a long history in English despite its **[uncertain origin](https://wordhistories.net/2021/04/28/think-outside-box/),** certainly long enough to be familiar around the world. However, the expression is idiomatic, and when translating idioms, it’s generally better to substitute an equivalent idiom that would be more familiar in the other language, rather than trying to find a way to render the expression literally. For example, in French, you would probably use a phrase which essentially means “leave the well-trod path” (_sortir des sentiers battus_) or you would just say flatly, “think differently” (_penser autrement_). Which is why I was very surprised by a Norwegian TV show I was watching last night. Somebody said something which was subtitled “I had to think outside the box,” and in the audio, I heard what sounded like the word “box.” This wasn’t an example of a bilingual speaker temporarily switching to English, which I’ve heard in Denmark, Sweden, and other countries where English familiarity is common; the whole sentence was definitely Norwegian. I did some searching, and found that the word for “box” in Norwegian" is “boksen,” so this seems to be an instance where the English idiom has been imported and localised. So now I’m curious. How many languages did not have a pre-existing expression corresponding to “get beyond the old ways of thinking,” equivalent to the English idiom, which would typically be substituted in translation, such that some form of the original expression had to be adopted and translated for local use, as (apparently) in Norwegian? And as a corollary, for other languages where the idiom presumably hasn’t been imported, is it possible to create a more-or-less direct translation that would be reasonably comprehensible to a native speaker in its intended sense? For example, I’m not a Spanish speaker, but tinkering with google translate gets me “_pensar fuera de la caja_” as a word-for-word equivalent. Would that be understood with the equivalent meaning in Madrid, or would it get me funny looks? Are there examples of languages where a word-for-word translation would indeed be received as perplexing gibberish? Or is the cliché so well known that the listener would likely understand what you were trying to get at, even if the translated phrase itself was nonsense? And finally, just for fun, what are some equivalent expressions in other languages where they _do_ have a well-established and easily substitutable idiom totally unrelated to boxes? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/2 "2024-06-27T12:00:19Z")
In Hebrew we use the exact same phrase _(lachshov michutz lakufsa_) with the exact same meaning. It’s almost certainly loaned from English. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/3 "2024-06-27T12:02:52Z")
Huh, that’s surprising to me. I would have thought that if any language had a very long tradition of musing in depth on old and new ways of thinking, and would therefore have established idioms expressing the equivalent concept, it would be Hebrew. Learn something every day! Edit to add: I mean to say, I’m sure those kinds of pre-existing idioms do exist in some form; what’s surprising to me is that the “new” English loan-phrase has been adopted, rather than the older expressions persisting. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/4 "2024-06-27T13:09:07Z")
From my university linguistics days, Benjamin Whorf posited ‘Standard Average European’ which was essentially a circle drawn around the normally distinguished Slavic, Romance, Germanic, Finno-Ugric etc language families to unite them as a common way of thinking rather than just speaking. Idioms may be language-specific [we might say ‘think outside the box’, they say ‘be the anomalous octopus’] but these reflect deeper linguistic and cognitive structures. Whorf was interested particularly in deconstructing how Standard Average European linguists interpreted the language and cognitive structures of other peoples and cultures, by using SAE as a kind of implicit ‘normal’ way of thinking. It doesn’t quite address your question but Whorf would argue that while the detail of the expression may differ across SAE languages, they’ll still frame themselves according to a common structure of the implied bounded group being the norm, outside as the point of difference, thought being able to be contained like it was a liquid rather than all pervading and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/5 "2024-06-27T13:31:28Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > Edit to add: I mean to say, I’m sure those kinds of pre-existing idioms do exist in some form; what’s surprising to me is that the “new” English loan-phrase has been adopted, rather than the older expressions persisting. Let me ask you this: English has also been around for a while, whereas “think outside the box” has been used for, what, 30 years? Surely there are older English-language phrases that mean the same thing. So what are they? The fact is, it’s a useful idiom. Someone thought of it in English and it caught on; then someone translated it to Hebrew, and it caught on here, too. Simple as that. Sometimes, a good turn of phrase is just a good turn of phrase. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/6 "2024-06-27T13:49:35Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Let me ask you this: English has also been around for a while, whereas “think outside the box” has been used for, what, 30 years? At least since 1969. It was popularized (though maybe not originated) in the context of the “nine dots, four lines” puzzle. ---
**Author:** ![Limmin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f04885/32.png) [@Limmin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Limmin)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/7 "2024-06-27T13:58:49Z")
Then maybe the phrase “think outside the box” isn’t quite as idiomatic as one might think, if it’s based on a method for solving a puzzle that would need to be described in any number of languages. Being an abstract idea, it may be expressed similarly to math, which of course must be described in other languages. Not necessarily idiomatic, or coming from another language (e.g., English). ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/8 "2024-06-27T14:12:10Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > So what are they? Heh, that’s a fair point. My grandfather used to say “your nose is on the handlebars.” Meaning, you’re pedaling with your head down, mindlessly heading to the destination, totally on automatic, instead of actively thinking about what you’re doing. It’s a good phrase, but I can see why it wouldn’t gain wider currency. ---
**Author:** ![Moonrise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonrise/32/14764_2.png) [@Moonrise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonrise)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/9 "2024-06-27T16:48:23Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > My grandfather used to say “your nose is on the handlebars.” Meaning, you’re pedaling with your head down, mindlessly heading to the destination, totally on automatic, instead of actively thinking about what you’re doing. It’s a good phrase, but I can see why it wouldn’t gain wider currency. Funny. In French, _avoir le nez dans le guidon_, means almost literally what your grandfather used to say : “to be so overwhelmed by work that you’re jumping from one urgent task to another without having the time to think or plan anything”. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/10 "2024-06-27T17:19:19Z")
He did spend a lot of time in Europe during WW2. Maybe he picked it up. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2024, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/11 "2024-06-27T17:31:59Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > And as a corollary, for other languages where the idiom presumably hasn’t been imported, is it possible to create a more-or-less direct translation that would be reasonably comprehensible to a native speaker in its intended sense? For example, I’m not a Spanish speaker, but tinkering with google translate gets me “_pensar fuera de la caja_” as a word-for-word equivalent. Would that be understood with the equivalent meaning in Madrid, or would it get me funny looks? Are there examples of languages where a word-for-word translation would indeed be received as perplexing gibberish? Or is the cliché so well known that the listener would likely understand what you were trying to get at, even if the translated phrase itself was nonsense? The word for literal translation of an idiomatic phrase is is “calque”. > **[Calque](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque)** > > In linguistics, a calque (/kælk/) or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, “to calque” means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new lexeme in the target language. For instance, the English word "skyscraper" has been calqued in dozens of other languages, combining words for "sky" and "scrape" in each language, as for example, Ca... ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/12 "2024-06-28T09:12:35Z")
I have a hard time coming up with an exact equivalent in German, but there’s a very similar word for the opposite of “thinking outside the box”, “Schubladendenken” which literally means “drawer thinking” and figuratively that someone’s thought processes are all neatly divided into separate “drawers”. To convey the meaning of “thinking outside the box,” you would say something like “Wir müssen uns vom Schubladendenken befreien” (we must get rid of thinking _inside_ the box). ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2024, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/think-outside-the-box-in-other-languages/1003401/13 "2024-06-28T11:01:40Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > The word for literal translation of an idiomatic phrase is is “calque”. Fun fact I just learned this week: “calque” is a loan word, but “loan word” is a calque.