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A Chinese term that has no satisfactory English translation: 辜負
I've seen this translated as: to disappoint, to fail, to waste, to betray.
It isn't any of those things, yet it is all of those things.
I had a perfect use for it yesterday but since my partner doesn't know Chinese, I found myself struggling to express the thought in English.
Friend knows my daughter is injured and can only eat soft food. They went out of their way to prepare a meal that she could eat even though we didn't plan to stay for dinner. So we ended up staying because I didn't want to 辜負 their efforts.
And I find English just didn't have the word I was looking for. The word carries meaning that's is both letting someone down and wasting their efforts.
Say a parent spent years saving for a kids college tuition and suddenly kid says they changed their minds. It 辜負's their effort to save all those years.
I find no word in English carries the same sentiment. It's both the waste and let down
Turning this into a thread of Chinese words I find has no satisfactory English translation.
仇人
Often translated as enemy or nemesis.
What it means: someone who has done something wrong to me on a personal level. In dramas it's often someone who has killed a member of one's family or framed the family for a crime.
Why translations falls flat.
Enemy can be just a person on the other side of a war. That soldier didn't do anything to me. We are just on opposing sides of a conflict. It's not personal. We have another word for that. 敵人
Nemesis usually means someone I am opposing or competing against. We might be in the same field and don't see eye to eye and always butting heads, but that person never did anything to wrong me on a personal level.
仇人 is a very specific thing where there's a wrong done to you by that person on a personal level.
幸福 is another Chinese term with no satisfactory English translation.
Often translated as happiness or prosperity.
What it means:
It is used to describe one's state of being as good and fortunate.
Why the translations fall flat
Happiness is a short term thing. Did you have a good day? Yes. I was very happy at the amusement park. We have a term for that- 開心.
But 幸福 is different. I can be overall very 幸福 but having a very bad day, or week. It doesn't take away from my overall state of 幸福。 It is also not a thing money can Buy. You may be happy to get that thing you purchased but that momentary happiness is fleeting and doesn't contribute to our overall state of 幸福。
Prosperity also falls flat because 幸福 does not necessarily mean rich. Obviously rich people tend to be happier people when basic needs are met but you can be relatively poor yet very 幸福 because you are surrounded by love and kids and have what you generally want or need in life.
幸福 is a long term happiness/prosperity that comes from life decisions or if you're lucky, born circumstances.
The closest translation would be something like "I've been very fortunate in life" but that takes away the active decision making part that created your 幸福。Perhaps you have this 幸福 because you worked and studied hard and got that dream job and could start a family and with someone you love. And part of that 幸福 is having the right person in your life and you didn't pick a partner for vanity reasons.
The important distinction for me is that 幸福 is a long term happiness that depends on circumstances and good decisions whereas happiness is a short term thing that a day at the amusement park or a new purchase could satisfy for a day.
This next one in this thread might get some pushback but I find 對不起 unsatisfactory in translation.
Generally translated to : sorry.
Which seems straightforward and generally accepted but Chinese people have several terms that get translated to "sorry".
抱歉
不好意思
The two above are also, and mostly, correctly, translated to "I'm sorry".
對不起 while not incorrect, to me is a stronger form of "sorry". While it does get used casually almost joke like, it carries a deeper remorse. If you accidentally walk into someone on the sidewalk, your apology will probably be 不好意思. You are telling the other person you didn't mean to do that. It was unintentional, you apologize, and you move on.
對不起 are the words : toward(you), not, rise.
It's meaning is much more than accidentally hitting someone. It means you failed to live up to expectations.
I've seen 我對不起他 translated as "I'm sorry to him" (which is a bad translation to begin with ) but what it really means is "I've failed to live up to what is expected of me in my dealings and behaviour to that person".
When used formally, it implies a deeper failing than simply not seeing where you were going. Maybe a cheating spouse will say 我對不起你 because 不好意思 doesn't cut it for that. You have to admit that you've failed on a basic expectation level.
So all the forms of sorry get rolled into a single word in English and does not do justice to the nuance of the apology.
Every Chinese child in the diaspora is familiar with the word "抱".
No matter how reluctant the kids (and sometimes parents) are to speak Chinese, I can bet that the phrase "I want 抱抱" has been said. That's because the word 抱 has no English equivalent.
抱 (pronounced "Bao" in mandarin and "Po" in Cantonese) means - pick up and carry. But very specifically the type of carry is clutching in the arms kind of carry.
If you are using a hand to carry a heavy bag (dangling), that is not 抱. It is when you are holding something in your arms and against your chest.
My friend's mom teased her because she went to buy rice and came home clutching the heavy bag in that manner and asked her why she 抱 the rice and how precious it was. The word is mostly for kids, pets, etc.
In English, kids use terms like "up", "carry"... But none compare to 抱 because that term isn't used for anything else.
Because there's no translation, it is one of the few words that every kid in the diaspora knows.
Edit to add: my husband doesn't speak Chinese and his favourite phrase is "daddy, 抱me".
@chu
Personal affront?
@chu
I would use
stymie
But I see that might be missing some meanings
@chu Paging @grammargirl …
English tends to fall back on all-purpose slang for such things.
If you said "we didn't want to hose their efforts" it would more or less mean the same thing, in context. If someone is in a bad situation and wants to express that in a polite way you could also say "I'm completely hosed!"
It's odd, cause if you were to "hose off" your dirty car, it would be a good thing. All-purpose.
Take off you hoser.
@jpaskaruk @chu Where are you from? Having grown up in the south and lived on the east coast I’ve never even heard of hose being used that way except in a film, and then I didn’t even understand the meaning. Edit: Checked the profile and I see both Canada and central continental (US Midwest). I love that language has so much variation and nuance. Thanks for sharing how you express things there.
For more fine Canadian hose content, find a copy of Strange Brew (1983), the Bob and Doug McKenzie movie, in which they save the world from an evil plot to take over the world with mind control beer.
@jpaskaruk @leftyknowitall @chu
That sounds hilarious
@CoolBlenderKitten @leftyknowitall @chu
Obviously I think it is but YMMV lol
@chu Still no English word, but sounds like the object of a vendetta.
Exactly that. We have the word vendetta but no word for the person who committed it.
@chu @cwicseolfor
How about
feud:
a prolonged and bitter quarrel or dispute.
a state of prolonged mutual hostility, typically between two families or communities, characterized by murderous assaults in revenge for previous injuries.
Origin
Middle English fede ‘hostility, ill will’, from Old French feide, from Middle Dutch, Middle Low German vēde, of Germanic origin; related to foe.
@chu @cwicseolfor
It is more like 世仇 (feud over generations of mutual wrong doing)
@kofanchen @chu I was pleased to see 仇殺 as a compound word reinforcing the meaning - feud is a really good English term along with vendetta, and it gets at the personal or familial nature, but the thing I still unable to locate in any of the Romance, Germanic, or Nordic vocabulary I have (from which I might be able to pull English cognates) is the word for the person who instigates one. 仇人 is so particular!
@cwicseolfor @kofanchen @chu the vendetta is family based. So is the feud. This because society was organized /based on the household. Finding a word for the individual who starts the feud is thus difficult.
@nicolas @kofanchen @chu Chinese has words for both the feud/ vendetta and for the person who starts one, though, so I don't think the household basis of society is why this word is hard to locate in English (and in my very limited knowledge of other European languages.) Finding a translation for the existing Chinese word 仇人for a specific kind of blood enemy, someone who starts a vendetta, was the origin of this thread.
@cwicseolfor @kofanchen @chu my point was badly articulated. I propose that the household basis of society makes it unlikely to find the equivalent, unless we are talking about rival household.
@cwicseolfor @kofanchen @chu in addition , I propose that in English it is more likely qualifiers used As a basis. Hereditary ennemi, archenemy . Blood enemy. Ennemi juré in French,
@nicolas I may be still missing something, but as households form the basis of Chinese and Italian societies both, I don't see how that basis would be the reason for an absence of terms for [person who starts a vendetta] in one language but not the other.
Vendetta comes from the same root as vengeance, so a vendicatore is a revenge-person, the one who "avenges" a crime on behalf of an aggrieved family. But 仇人 is the one who commits that first offense against a family unit.
@kofanchen @chu
@cwicseolfor @kofanchen @chu that was my attempt at offering an explanation for there not being one. Btw strictly speaking in Italian the vendetta is the punishment/vengeance, not the feud I.e. the state of hostility.
@nicolas @cwicseolfor @kofanchen
Interesting how the word creeped into a different meaning in English.
These things are infinitely fascinating
@chu @nicolas @cwicseolfor I agree this sounds like in need of a seminar in person 
@nicolas AH, I now see what you mean. Thanks for holding with the conversation until then! @kofanchen @chu
@chu And we had to steal vendetta from the Italians.
@chu how about content.
Doesn't feel right. Our word for content is 滿足.
幸福 deeper than that. When people get married or have kids, you generally wish them 幸福。 There's a long term and rich happiness attached to the term. They can be very 開心(happy) on their wedding day but you generally don't say you wish them that. You want them to have all the right circumstances for a forever happiness.
@chu wonder if it's not rooted in religious differences since long term happiness could not be accomplished. Contentment could only be rooted in good relationship with god/church.
That's an interesting thought.
This is why I find linguistics so fascinating. I am not versed nearly enough in history to think this through though.
Chinese is also sort of an invented language. What is Chinese? It's a gigantic amalgamation of a whole bunch of languages and cultures into a standardized one that they forced on the population. Even within China words get used differently depending on dialect. If these cultures weren't all conquered and had their own money and military, we'd rightfully call them individual languages.
I speak Cantonese and until I spent years learning mandarin, could not understand a word.
Speak to me in Shanghainese, fucan, Manchu, I wouldn't get a word.
@chu look for patterns in the forces that unite the region. Buddhism, confucianism taoism. Example: fairy tales in Christian west tell us about heroes who are gifted/born with great talent or powers. Most heroes in fairy tales in East Asia acquire their talents via training/work.
Good point.
We value hard work, respect, and filial piety a lot so a lot of the terms will be rooted in that.
@chu @nicolas
幸 for me, is a bit more short term, and we can see from wiki dictionary: it is an ideogrammic compound (會意／会意) : 屰 (“opposite”) + 夭 (“death”) – lucky to be alive; luck
福 on the other hand does have long term religious implication, it is
Phono-semantic compound (形聲／形声) of semantic 示 ( altar) + phonetic 畐 Cognate with 富 ( “rich”)
Whenever you see 示 it always imply it is "god given" or from 天意
we wish for 福 hoping to be blessed with fortune and happiness. We don't wish for 幸
@chu @nicolas
The term exists in Japanese too but
Can be「幸せ」 or「幸福（こうふく）」。
There are slight differences between the two
1. 幸福 is usually for abstracted life commentary:
家族と過ごす時間が一番の幸福。
與家人共享的時光就是最大的幸福。
2. 幸せ is used to express personal blissfulness
彼女は幸せそうにラーメンを食べる。
她幸福地吃著拉麵。
See https://japanese123.tw/blog/word/312
@kofanchen @chu heeeyy xiexieni m4goi.
Thus the sanxings role in happiness comes into play?
@nicolas @chu I don't actually know how to read Pinyin 
...
As for SanXings I think their worship was dated around the Ming dynasty..while the idea of 福 is ancient, and probably as old as the idea of 天 as the moral/powerful force and order. How this is religious is unclear to me, becus nature/ancestry worship in Han society is complicated topic to pin down as religion or ethics
What's sanxing? 三星？三型？
I'm no good at PY either beyond typing it into my phone. So many options for each word. Lol
When I think religion in Ming Dynasty I have to thank 金庸 for the little bit I know. After watching 倚天屠龍劍 I fell into a rabbit hole reading about 明教.
I found it to be absolutely fascinating especially since it just disappeared and then nobody talks about it anymore.
It really makes me wonder how many other religions we don't know about and what impact that had on the culture that's long lost to history.
@chu this is beautiful & I'm sharing it with everyone I care about:
抱 / "bao" / "po"
@chu and can even extend as hug: 來爸爸抱抱，不痛不痛
I wonder if that's a dialect thing. Us canto speakers don't really use it like that. I've heard other Mando speakers use it like that but we would use 攬 in that sentence.
@chu wow this is so good, I was literally thinking about Hoklo/Hokkie; You are right in Taiwanese Hoklo we also use 攬 lam such as 我偕伊攬 （I hug him/her) , is this the same for Teochew (cue @skinnylatte here sorry)?
So 抱 as hug must be Mandarin
@kofanchen @chu hmm we use 抱 as well in Teochew and Hokkien but possibly a variant of Hokkien thing (we say ‘por’)
@skinnylatte @chu Ah that is interesting! Would you be able to give a n sentence?
I believe I would say 我抱囝仔 （I carry the kid/infant)
Ha. Speaking of dialect, I just had to look up 囝. I've never seen that before. We use 仔
@chu apparently I picked the wrong character 
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9B%A1%E4%BB%94#Chinese
I've never seen it written as 囡. I've only ever seen/used 女.
Is this a TW thing? I get a lot of TW kid books and I've still never seen it.
@chu to be fair it is beyond my knowledge, there are many Cantonese/Hokkien characters that are ancient and only 漢學校老師 (those capable reading Confucius with Cantonese and Hokkien) know the correct character to use, but apparently according to wiki, 囡仔 is common among southern Hokkien
@chu going a bit overboard perhaps now: for example "pretty" in Cantonese (I believe) is 靚 "leng" but
in Taiwanese Hokkien is 媠 "sui".
Both are at least dated back to circa Han/Wen dynasty:
《後漢書．卷八九．南匈奴傳》：「昭君豐容 *靚* 飾，光明漢宮，顧景裴回，竦動左右。」vs 《文選．曹植．七啟》：「收亂髮兮拂蘭澤，行 *媠* 服兮揚幽若。」
@kofanchen @chu 伊愛別人抱伊 (i ai pa̍t-lâng phō i) (he wants someone else to carry him) is something I would say
Interestingly phō is one of the ways to say 抱 so it might be a Quanzhou vs Zhangzhou accent thing
https://chhoe.taigi.info/ChoanbinTaigiJinchengGisuHunkipPotian/5647
@kofanchen @chu my Taigi teacher in Kaohsiung was saying parts of Taiwan had some words and terms diff from the north. I found the Kaohsiung and Tainan Taigi closer to what I speak so must be the same origin
@skinnylatte @chu that is indeed, I speak much more than pho as learnt from my A-ma, but my mum is from Lukang which would use pho more
@skinnylatte 
I guess this is not quite "hug"
When @chu was talking about 攬
I was thinking about this:
@kofanchen @chu honestly v new to reading / romanizing Taigi! I think I’ve heard lam before but I might call my mum and ask haha
Beautiful.
It also made me realize that 牛 牢 are pronounced probably much more similarly in other dialects than canto.
Which makes the choice of radicals make a lot more sense
Someone asked me about Chinese as a language today and I explained how mandarin is really a made up language just over a century or so old.
If all our various regions had their own armies, each "dialect" would rightly be considered a language on its own.
It's so interesting to learn how different places use the same word differently. I should probably put that disclaimer in my posts that I'm canto biased.
The Grove @chu 
I appreciate all of this so so so so sooooo much
Even tho my Chinese (my context is Mandarin, what Iw as raised in) has def declined a good bit with immediate fluency, as it was the language I was raised in, I find that yeah, just kinda innately I code switch just switching from Chinese to English, cuz exactly this, so many concepts I don’t really feel like translate well to english, and so English even after all these years primarily speaking it, it still kinda feels emotionally muted to me :P