A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Useful and Intriguing Words From Around the World.
Ever racked your brain for a word you're convinced should exist, yet is inexplicably absent from the dictionary? All languages have their limitations - should English fall short, the expression may lie elsewhere. That's where this book comes in: a quirky lexicon of well-known and more obscure 'untranslatables', linguistic gems that capture those nebulous undefinables with such satisfying precision, they'll have you squealing 'eureka!' from a new-found plane of expression.
The very fact of untranslatables suggests differing ways of looking at the world. A siesta may be quintessentially Spanish, but does an extensive aesthetic vocabulary render the Japanese more asthete? In the interest of cross-cultural enquiry, our mots justes - grouped according to language - are prefaced with insightful overviews of the cultures they complement. Some of the world's leading translators set the ball rolling by nominating their own untranslatable favourites.
Embellished in four-colour by the well-known illustrator (Jeff Fisher or Ian Bilbey), Untranslatables is bound to entertain even the most well versed polyglot - as well as the rest of us, who are merely fascinated.
