Translating the untranslatable

Any comment on this? There is no tagalog (my native) word in there so I could not personally comment on the words listed here. 

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2741

Excellent article, and I agree with the writer. I don't believe there really are untranslatable words, just unskilled translators or people who have their own little strange definition of "untranslatable".

We posted a similar article before with a lot more included, I love looking at words we don't have, they are always still relatable, and often quite surreal, or romantic , emotional concepts. 

Maybe not untranslatable, but might just take a lot more words to translate. Some of those words gave me a good laugh, though. 

prozvonit Czech call a cellphone once so the other person will call back on their dime

--> Cheapskate

kyoikumama Japanese mother who relentlessly pushes her children toward academic achievement

--> Tiger mom

jayus Indonesian joke told so poorly that one cannot help laughing

--> Dad joke

So you do believe that any term or word can be translated with sufficient precision? And what about some cultural/other phenomena that do not exist in other cultures? What do you think about the notion of linguistic lacoons? 

Vladyslava wrote:

So you do believe that any term or word can be translated with sufficient precision? And what about some cultural/other phenomena that do not exist in other cultures? What do you think about the notion of linguistic lacoons?

Sorry for my ignorance, but what are linguistic lacoons? 

I'm not a translator by profession, nor did I major in translation studies, but you probably can get close enough for the most part. For things that are culturally unique, that's what an explanatory note is for, explaining the context of the term. 

Lacoons are gaps in the language, i. e. absence of an analogous structure, word, idiom etc.

Okay, so if one doesn't find an exact match in the target language of translation, translation with explanation would we as good as a proper match? 

Vladyslava wrote:

Lacoons are gaps in the language, i. e. absence of an analogous structure, word, idiom etc.
Okay, so if one doesn't find an exact match in the target language of translation, translation with explanation would we as good as a proper match?

Did you mean lacune?