Lookups for the word "schadenfreude" have increased

[conuly]

Over 30,000% recently.

I tell you, one of the few real joys of the past four years is looking at the Merriam-Webster's Trending Words list. I've never been sure if they're actually trending words or if MW likes to troll the Right.

As noted at the website, when we're speaking English, it's an English-language word. I say this because every so often I come across somebody who insists that schadenfreude is an untranslateable German word with no English equivalent, and the joke's on them because the English word for schadenfreude is schadenfreude. Borrowings count. (Also, all human languages can express the same concepts, and no concept is really untranslateable, though some might require a bit of extra chatter to get across languages.)

Comments

[jessie_c]

You can also sing it to the Hallelujah Chorus. Just in case you're wondering. For some reason.

[conuly]

Thanks for that. Now I've got it in my head.

[ioplokon]

haha yeah, as someone who does some translation work these things are always funny to me because usually what I have trouble translating aren't like deep-seeming epiphenomena but rather stuff like, "bailiff who is also a notary."

[conuly]

I also have a sneaking suspicion that most of those listicles are lying anyway, and those mystical words are being translated in some gratuitously fanciful way.

[neotoma]

I certainly looked up schadenfreude yesterday. I was looking for John Scalzi's Schadenfreude Pie Recipe

I swear, the next time I get to go to an actual house party (after a safe vaccine is distribute to the general populace), I'm going to bring a schadenfreude pie AND an impeachment cake.

[ioplokon]

I do think for literary translation the pitfalls are real because often literary writing is playing with multiple meanings and connotations (eg: I recently had some issues with translating 'crisser' which is an onomatopoetic verb as well as a homophone of a swear word in a passage where both the vulgar and religious significance are not irrelevant) - but when you're not doing literary translation, you don't need to capture every shade of meaning. But you don't see anyone talking about how UNTRANSLATABLE it is that you can't say you christed your ex to the curb in English.

[raino]

Well there are some words in Finnish that lack an equivalent in English (and vice versa). Barn-raising but like way more general, any event that community gathers to do some specific task without pay (but food expected) = talkoot. Mistress of the house but one who leads from the front, working as much as anyone else under her command or more generally the female in charge who is not just bossing but working = emäntä.

[raino]

And infuriatingly, there’s no good finnish word for ’spoiler’! We use the english word now and soon of course it will be part of Finnish.

[conuly]

Right, I'm not saying that's not the case. But "this snappy lexical unit cannot be expressed in another language without some explanation" is not the same as "this word cannot be translated into another language".

You've just done it.

[conuly]

I wonder when "spoiler", with the fannish sense, entered the general English vocabulary. I have the feeling it's a fairly recent word, but is my feeling correct?

One google search later: https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/spoiler-alert-revealing-the-origins-of-the-spoiler/

[roselightfairy]

As someone who speaks English and German and studied translation, I liked to use the word schadenfreude to attack the concept of untranslatability ;)

[sabotabby]

Now I know a thing!

[conuly]

Don't sell yourself short! I'm sure you know at least a dozen things.

[mount_oregano]

Thank you for this! I will sing as I heckle the evening news tonight.

[acelightning]

Some words are just so specific that you need a whole sentence in a different language to translate them. I remember when i was in Quebec, ordering breakfast, and they listed 'crepes' with maple syrup on the menu. I ordered them, figuring "crepes" was just the closest they could get to "pancakes" in Quebecois. Instead, I got a plate filled with thin, soft, eggy pancakes drenched in maple syrup - the combination was delicious. But now i know that "crepes" are not "pancakes" - I need to ask for something like "crepes a la mode Americain" - American style pancakes, with butter and maple syrup, and a side order of bacon, please.

There is never any such thing as an exact translation :-)

[siderea]

But this presupposes the explanation is the same as the word. That is, that an explanation can do the same linguistic work as the word it explains does.

In ioplokon's example, if a language has a word for "a bailiff who is also a notary" I can tell you something about that word and the culture it's from without knowing anything further: that culture has a set of notions and ideas about That Which Is Being Described As A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary. For instance what someone who is That Which Is Being Described As A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary customarily wears, or how they speak, or what social class they typically belong to, and what politics they might likely subscribe to. They probably have the local equivalent of That Which Is Being Described As A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary lightbulb jokes. And none of this – not even the fact that it exists – is even so much as hinted at by saying "well, it's A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary". The very fact that there's a word that means A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary means that that's a Thing in the culture being described*. It's not just a personal coincidence that this here person is both a bailiff and also a notary, they are occupying a social role called whatever word they use to call That Which Is Being Described As A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary. And unless you use a word for that, you don't communicate that it is a Thing in this here other culture, that has this other language.

And why you can – "can" – explain how many Bailifs-who-are-also-Notaries it takes to screw in a lightbulb and why Bailifs-who-are-also-Notaries drinking their coffee black is a trope and how mostly they are working class but with educational aspirations and vote Tory, you will have thereby changed the topic and aren't talking about whatever the original story was about.

* Or occasionally the culture from which the writer is from, infelicitously projected on another culture erroneously.

[siderea]

Commenting to capture the recipe pointers to my email. :9

BTW, do you know about Muster Cake aka Election Cake? (https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1293667.html)

[silveradept]

I wouldn't be surprised if they were trolling the Right, but I also have noted that the Right is much more likely to be misusing a word and then repeating it across the echo chamber to try and get everyone else to misuse it with their framing.

Schadenfreude, for me, is almost always an Avenue Q song if there needs to be visuals or a soundtrack accompanying.

[conuly]

:)

[conuly]

Nothing is ever exact.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

If English didn't include loan words, we'd still be speaking Old English, with no impact from the Normans. Including the word "language", which is French.

[conuly]

No more than the Germans speak whatever the ancestral language of German is. English would still have evolved. It just would have evolved differently.