Translation
This word has been voted as one of the ten English words that are hardest to translate in June 2004 by Today Translations, a British translation company. However, almost the exact word exists in at least some of the Romance languages (such as Portuguese - plenipotenciário; French - plénipotentiaire; Romanian - plenipotenţiar; Spanish - plenipotenciario; Italian - plenipotenziario), with exactly the same meaning; the Albanian word i/e plotfuqishëm sounds similar, although it has native roots; other languages have their own equivalents (for instance, German - Bevollmächtigt(er) (adjective or noun), Dutch Gevolmachtigd(e), Swedish fullmäktig, Norwegian fullmektig - all these Germanic cases are literal parallels; Serbian punomoćan (пуномоћан in Cyrillic), Russian полномочный (полный=full, мочь=to be in power, to be able), Czech zplnomocněný (plno=full, moc=power), Slovak splnomocnený (plno=full, moc=power), Polish pełnomocnik (pełno=of full, moc=power), Bulgarian пълномощен (pǎlnomošten), Finnish täysivaltainen, Greek πληρεξούσιος, plērexoúsios, Turkish tam yetkili, and Tatar wäqälätle.
Read more about this topic: Plenipotentiary
Famous quotes containing the word translation:
“...it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”
—Bible: New Testament, 1 Corinthians 7:9.
King James translation reads, “It is better to marry than to burn.”
“Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information—hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing.... It is translation that demonstrates most vividly the yearning for transformation that underlies every act involving speech, that supremely human gift.”
—Harry Mathews (b. 1930)