The Most Difficult Word to Translate
Which word in this sentence is the most difficult to translate? I’ll give the answer below with some space so you can’t cheat and see the answer. Only scroll down when you’ve picked a word. Do you know when the pep rally will start? The correct answer is YOU. Krystian Aparta is a volunteer translator for TED. He put together this amazing Ted-Ed video which is really worth watching- click here. I have summarized his thoughts in this blog. Why is YOU the most difficult word to translate? We don’t have the context to know which ‘you’ to use. Depending on the language the ‘you’ might change for many reasons: Familiarity with ‘you’ – formal, informal, queen, friend, parent,… Gender One or many or only two Dialectic differences Or a mixture of familiarity, number and gender Or drop the pronoun because it’s implied Or drop the pronoun so you don’t use the wrong one Let’s look at some examples: French- tu (informal, singular), vous (formal, s