Untranslatability - Examples - Grammar - Verb Forms

Verb Forms

English lacks some grammatical categories.

There is no simple way in English to contrast Finnish kirjoittaa or Polish pisać (continuing, corresponding to English to write) and kirjoitella or pisywać (a regular frequentative, "to occasionally write short passages at a time", or "to jot down now and then"). Also, hypätä and skoczyć (to jump once) and hyppiä and skakać (to continuously jump; to be jumping from point A to B) are another example.

Irish allows the prohibitive mood to be used in the passive voice. The effect is used to prohibit something while expressing society's disapproval for that action at the same time. For example, contrast Ná caithigí tobac (meaning "Don't smoke" when said to multiple people), which uses the second person plural in the imperative meaning "Do not smoke", with Ná caitear tobac, which is best translated as "Smoking just isn't done here", uses the autonomous imperative meaning "One does not smoke".

As in Latin, Italian has two distinct declined past tenses, where io fui (passato remoto) and io sono stato (passato prossimo) both mean I was, the former indicating a concluded action in the (remote) past, and the latter an action that holds some connection to the present. The "passato remoto" is often used for narrative history (for example, novels). The difference is nowadays also partly geographic. In the north of Italy the "passato remoto" is rarely used in spoken language, whereas in the south it often takes the place of the "passato prossimo".

Likewise, English lacks a productive grammatical means to show indirection but must instead rely on periphrasis, that is the use of multiple words to explain an idea. Finnish grammar, on the contrary, allows the regular production of a series of verbal derivatives, each of which involves a greater degree of indirection. For example, on the basis of the verb vetää (to pull), it is possible to produce:

• vetää (pull),
• vedättää (cause something/someone to pull/to wind-up (lie)),
• vedätyttää (cause something/someone to cause something/someone to pull),
• vedätätyttää (cause something/someone to cause something/someone to cause something/someone to pull).

Most Turkic languages (Turkish, Azeri, Kazakh, etc.) contain the grammatical verb suffix "miş" (or "mis" in other dialects), which indicates that the speaker did not witness the act personally but surmises or has discovered that the act has occurred or was told of it by another. Examples: "Gitmiş!" (Turkish) which can be expressed in English as "it is reported that he/she has gone" or, most concisely, as "I guess he has gone". This grammatical form is also usually used when telling jokes and narrating stories. As well, nearly every Quechua sentence is marked by an evidential clitic, indicating the source of the speaker's knowledge (and how certain s/he is about the statement). The enclitic =mi expresses personal knowledge (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirmi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver - I know it for a fact"); =si expresses hearsay knowledge (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirsi, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, or so I've heard"); =chá expresses high probability (Tayta Wayllaqawaqa chufirchá, "Mr. Huayllacahua is a driver, most likely"). Colloquially, the latter is also used when the speaker has dreamed the event told in the sentence or experienced it under alcohol intoxication.

Languages that are extremely different from each other, like English and Chinese, need their translations to be more like adaptations. Chinese has no tenses per se, only three aspects. The English verb to be does not have a direct equivalent in Chinese. In an English sentence where to be leads to an adjective ("It is blue"), there is no to be in Chinese. (There are no adjectives in Chinese, instead there are stative verbs that don't need an extra verb.) If it states a location, the verb "zài" (在) is used, as in "We are in the house". In some other cases (usually when stating a judgement), the judgment verb "shì" (是) is used, as in "I am the leader." And in most other cases, such structure ("to be") is simply not used, but some more natural structure in Chinese is used instead. Any sentence that requires a play on those different meanings will not work the in the same way in Chinese. In fact, very simple concepts in English can sometimes be difficult to translate, for example, there is no single direct translation for the word "yes" in Chinese, as in Chinese the affirmative is said by repeating the verb in the question. ("Do you have it?" "(I) have".)