It's been a while since I added to this thread. It's getting harder to come up with stuff but this I used yesterday on here and I thought it deserves a post.

甘心 -
The characters mean "sweet" and "heart"

Put together it means to accept, to do something willingly, or be reconciled about... sort of.

"gan xin" in Mandarin, "Gum Sum" in Cantonese.

Two ways this is often used 甘心情願 - means to do something voluntarily or willingly. An example.
"Did that jerk husband of yours force you to sell your family heirloom to fund his sports car?"
"No. I 甘心情願" (I did it willingly)
(Side note: I hope this kind of conversation never actually takes place for anyone).

The other way it is often used: 我不甘心. This means that I don't accept something or my heart doesn't accept it.

It's not the same thing is not accepting a fact. It's a reluctance to accept one's fate or injustice.
Some examples: A person you really that committed a crime against you dies peacefully in his bed before getting brought to justice - no trial, no justice, no sense of vindication for you.
You might say "我不甘心". It's not that you don't accept that he's dead. It's that your heart is uncomfortable and unwilling to accept the world's lack of justice. (You see this in C drama land a lot).

A real life example. I used it yesterday because I hated that the Chinese got a gendered pronoun foisted onto them by Westerners and the radical for "person" turned into a radical for "woman" in the "she" form. I felt this took personhood away from women and I protested it with that phrase.
I am unwilling to peacefully accept the sexism of the world and the victory of the patriarchy over us.
It's not that I'm like an anti vaxxer and doesn't accept a fact. It's that I don't accept certain facts with a peace of heart and willingness of mind.

English really doesn't have a good equivalent for this IMO. We may protest that something is unfair. But it doesn't convey the deep sense of not being reconciled in our hearts.

#UntranslateableChinese

緣分

During our travels this summer, as a fellow hotel guest and I parted ways, I said "有緣再見." My daughter asked me what that meant and I completely fumbled.

緣分 "Yuan fen" in Mando, "Yuen fen" (with different tones) in Canto is translated in one of my apps as predestiny or an affinity.

緣 is the important word here. The second one just means "part" or "amount" (so you have some of it.

So I said "if we have 緣, we will meet again" as we parted. I tried to explain that it means destiny, but also it doesn't. Destiny is too heavy a word for this. Destiny is weighty whereas 緣分 is a much lighter concept. Destiny also has another word. Like you are destined to do something. We use the word "命” as in that's your life, or your life destiny. The word "destiny" gives me Legend of Zelda vibes where I am meant to save the world or pull the sword out of the stone. It's too weighty a translation.

緣分 is somewhere between serendipity and luck to me, but I had a really hard time finding the words in English I want to use for this.

It was finally toward the end of the trip when going to somewhere didn't work out I said "it just wasn't meant to be." I realized this is the closest to 緣分 that we have in English. It's a thing about luck and fate... but is inconsequential to the rest of the path of your life.

#UntranslateableChinese

嫌棄 deserves a post just because of the wide variety of ways I have seen this translated... and none seem to capture the meaning quite right.

"xian qi" in Mando. "yim hei" in Canto.

Has been translated to: to detest, to dislike, to disdain, to disregard.

All are fair. None have the right feel.

IMO, disdain is the closest, but disdain also have another translation and carries a harsher negative connotation than 嫌棄.

The best translation I've seen is "to turn your nose at".

Example uses:

You are visiting my town and couldn't book a hotel for whatever reason. I might say "If you don't 嫌棄, you are welcome to spend a night here."

What I am saying is that if you don't think this isn't suitable or too dirty or too small or for whatever reason beneath you, you can stay here. Which is close to disdain, but disdain has a clear negative connotation about being inferior that I feel like 嫌棄 does not. Again, there are harsher terms that translate to disdain and 嫌棄 is a somewhat gentler form of dislike.

I've heard it used jokingly among couples. "We've been married so many years and now you 嫌棄 me."

What that means is that now think I am flawed and not good enough.

嫌 as a stand alone word is to dislike something, but again, a gentle dislike more like to mind something.

I was anything but subtle, especially in my youth. I refused to sit beside one of my uncles who was a pack a day smoker. I am asthmatic and very sensitive to smells. My grandma noticed me avoiding my uncle and asked me what was wrong. I said that I 嫌 how badly he smells.

The word lands somewhere between a simple dislike and a lowly disdain. It hits a little harder than "I just don't like it". I was somewhat adding the insult of what I thought of his pack a day habit.

#UntranslateableChinese

We were with our Canto group when one asked how to translate 甘心. Given the big long discussion that followed, I think it is fair to say there is no English translation -- giving me another thing to add to this thread.

甘心 - "gan xin" in Mando, "gum sum" in Canto.

甘心 - 甘 I had coincidentally covered in the previous post in this thread, means sweet (sorta... click to see the above post).

心 is much more simple - this just means heart.

so sweet heart... it is not at all what we would think of in English.

甘心 loosely translates to accepting or believing - but not in the conspiracy theory sort of way of not believing.

When someone says they are not 甘心 it means that they are not accepting or not reconciled with something, it doesn't mean they don't believe it (though it's been translated to that).

Examples of usage.

Say you have been working really really hard on something, then out of nowhere, just before completing it and getting to show it off to your loved ones, someone ruins it or takes it away. You can say that you don't 甘心 about the loss. It's not that you don't believe the thing is lost, but that your heart doesn't accept it.

Maybe your ex dumped your butt and you've been working hard trying to win their heart back. Suddenly they announce they are getting married. You can say you are not 甘心 about the marriage. Your heart simply won't accept it.

I have also heard it used in drama land too. The good old revenge plot. You are on the cusp of taking revenge on someone who wronged you and just before you could extract your pound of flesh, they die (had a good, pleasant death too to make things worse). You are not 甘心 about their death.

甘心情願 is another often used saying to say that you did something willingly and with acceptance. This is often used when the situation is bad for the person involved, and they will say that they made the sacrifice willingly.

When someone says they are not 甘心， it's not that they are conspiracy theorists and don't accept a fact, it's that their hearts don't accept it and they are saying it's like a thorn in their hearts.

I think that's the best I can do for this one.

#UntranslateableChinese

甘 means kinda sweet. Or a bitter sweet. One of my apps call it a "slight honeyed flavour".

"Gan" in mandarin. "Gam" in canto.

It's sort of the opposite of 苦 which means bitter but also not. It's also not a straight "sweet" as there is another word for that.

It's the sweetness of medicines or the sweetness in bitter melon after the bitter passes. We have teas we describe as 甘. It's a sweetness that isn't sweet.

I know. I am not making sense and being totally contradictory.

It's this flavour that's a sweetness that isn't sweet like sugar. Think of a floral tea. It's sweet tasting, with a bitter undertone, but doesn't have sugar so it isn't sweet.

Sorry, not my greatest post about words that don't translate. It just doesn't have a translation and I can't even accurately describe it. You'll have to get a Chinese person to feed you some foods we call 甘.

Sweet without being sweet. The opposite of my ability to describe this.

#UntranslateableChinese

I tried to translate 水中撈月 and struggled to find an English equivalent for 撈.

(That idiom means trying to scoop/take the moon from the water).

And the scoop/take is the part where I struggled.

撈. "lao" (very similar in both Canto and mando and in fact, I don't know that I would write it out any differently in Canto).

It is the action of scooping something out of water using something that allows water to pass through.

So why the problem with the translation?

Scoop can mean I am scooping the water itself.

I can use a solid spoon and scoop out water. It doesn't imply taking the solids and leaving behind the liquid.

The act itself implies using something like a net or slotted spoon type of thing to take something out of the water.

We might use "fish" as in to fish something out of the water, but there are many ways one could accomplish that.

Some examples of how it is used.

"撈 the dumpling out of the water. They're cooked."

Someone using the net to clear the leaves off the pool is said to 撈 the leaves.

The verb seems straight forward, yet none of the translations satisfied how I wanted to translate that idiom.

And now that I think about it, it is weird how specific the word is... or maybe it's weird that English doesn't have a word with a similar level of precision.

#UntranslateableChinese

Getting married, while there is a translation to English, the baked in patriarchy does not translate.

Hang on for this one. Ladies, you will love this 🙄

In English, we say "marry" whether it is a man getting married to a woman or a woman getting married to a man. In Chinese, the words are completely different.

If a woman is getting married, she is said to 嫁.
Oh... the patriarchy!

The word itself is a female radical and the word family. So a female going to a (new) family.

When a man is getting married, he is said to 娶.
This is literally the word for "to take" on top of the female radical. Yes. When men get married, they take a female.
Oh the patriarchy!

Both these words get translated to "getting married" but you totally miss how sexism is so baked right into the language. I am writing a story in English and Chinese and I intentionally flip the two as its set in a female dominated society. It's jarring to read.

The sexism is also why my friend jokes that the word marriage 婚 is the female radical next to the word for "coma". Only a woman in a coma would agree to marriage.

I could write a whole other thread on sexism in this language. The rule of thumb is that positive attributes have male radicals in them and negative attributes have female radicals in them. The sexism in the culture and language is part of why I rejected so much of it growing up. Welcome to my world!

#UntranslateableChinese

忍 is a pretty common word though it's not hard to translate, none of the translations do justice IMO.

"Ren" in Mandarin. "Yan" in Cantonese.

It means to tolerate, to endure, to put up with, to hold back. But it's the usage that I find translations often get clumsy.

The word is written in as a big piece of art in the dojo that shared space with Tai Chi practitioners. It holds deep meaning spiritually as the ability to tolerate and endure means one has reached a certain level of inner peace. (This is way beyond me as I swear and curse every time I read news everyday so don't ask me to go deeper into this. I have not reached this and may never will).

If someone got injured and has open wounds all over, you would say 忍 as you poured peroxide on the cuts and they are screaming in pain. In English you'd say "bear with this" or "hang on".

Say you can't stand your boss. You 忍 until you get a new job and try your best not to act out and kick him in the teeth.

If something sad is happening, you can't hold back the tears, you can no longer 忍 and you start crying.

You might be thinking that it's perfectly translateable as I am translating it just fine... but there's a little bit of je ne sais quoi. It's the connotation of the word that I find translations don't do justice to. If I am simply putting up with something, there's a very negative connotation to that. Perhaps it's the spirituality part, when one can 忍 its not nearly as negative. There's an inner ability you've unlocked kind of thing.

The word itself is the word 刃, a knife of blade's edge, on top of 心, a heart. So I think of it as someone constantly holding a knife over your heart and you have to not move, not act out, and not be afraid of this threat over a vital organ.

There's a positive connotation of this word that I don't think I am expressing very well that none of the English translations convey. Perhaps this really is just the religious aspect of it coming into play - hence the lost in translation part.

May you find your inner peace and be able to 忍 all that is going on in the world. I don't even aspire to this anymore. I am just an loud and yelly person.

#UntranslateableChinese