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, singular or plural)

Thou- used to be the informal version, but English decided to be formal all the time

German- du (singular), ihr (plural)

English- y’all (American South), youse (Ireland), yins (Pennsylvania)

In Portuguese there are 2 singular forms for you: "tu" and "você". And 2 plural forms: "vós" and "vocês".  When you have a verb after "tu" and "vós" it is conjugated like an actual 2nd person, but with "você" and "vocês" it is conjugated like a third person (like he/she and they respectively). In Portugal "tu" is the informal way of "you" and "você" is more formal.

Have you had enough yet?

Japanese: -anata (あなた) -kimi (君) -omae (お前) Rude ones: -temee (てめえ) -kisama (貴様) -onore (己) Dialect ones: -anta (あんた) Old ones: -sonata (そなた) -onushi (お主) -nanji (汝) That's only singular You, and I surely have missed some. For plural, you can add either ra (等) or tachi(達) after each of those, and some of those pronouns even work with both of them like omaetachi/omaera. At the same time, they often refer to each other in 3rd person, using either their name or a title like sensei (先生), or drop the pronoun altogether if it's already clear with context.

I could go on but let’s end with this.

That means that the most difficult sentence in the world to translate into multiple languages would be:

Your job is to translate you for yourselves.

 

 

Aparta, Krystian. “One of the Most Difficult Words to Translate... - Krystian Aparta.” YouTube, TED, 6 Sept. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNV7CsKI5m8.

Leonardoworx LWZ. “Only One.” http://leonardoworx.prosite.com/