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".

This next term took me a long time to understand why the translations don't work for me.
任性

Translated as: willful, headstrong, free willed.

See the mismatch there? Again it's not any of those things and yet all of those things.

I finally realized the reason the translations fall flat is because women (and children, and frankly all people but not as much as women) are held to strict social codes in Confucian societies that western societies aren't.

When a woman is 任性, she is stubbornly not adhering to the social codes set out for her by society. She is not supposed to go out and run around and do all those wonderful things outside of the social codes that the patriarchy has set for us. Hence the free will part. And the headstrong part is having your own ideas and desires.

This is why the translations don't work because headstrong outside of the Confucian codes isn't necessarily a bad thing-nor is being wilful. But this isn't that. This carries a negative context because of the patriarchy.

So I love women who are 任性 because we are awesome.

吃苦 is a term that President Xi brought to the international stage and the best foreign media could do was translate it to its literal words "eat bitterness".

The term means to suffer and endure hardship. The 吃 means to eat, and this term is used to convey emotions as well.
吃醋 literally translates to eating vinegar but means to be jealous (usually over romantic rivals).

I suppose this extends the "you are what what you eat" idea and we are taking emotions and inputting them into the body like we eat them.

It isn't that we don't have words for suffering and jealousy in English, it's that the mode of experience is different. We don't take it in like food that can be shared or in some way choose how much we consume. In Chinese, the sharing of these things can be very emotional. You might say to a loved one, "If there's any bitterness, I will eat it with you" 有苦，我們一起吃. This becomes a very emotionally beautiful thing to say and hear. Something entirely lost in translation.

As an aside, Xi had complained that young people these days didn't eat enough bitterness and that's why they had so many political complaints (so of course a great public policy is to then make their lives worse 🙄 )

This next word that can't be translated in this thread took a while as I really had to think through how to convey it.

委屈

pronounced "wei qu" in mandarin, "wai wut" in Cantonese.

I've seen this (poorly) translated as "aggrieved". (Really, what does that even mean to you?) It's also been translated as "wronged". We had an entire discussion about how to translate this in one of my chat groups and the best someone could come up with was "please put up with this". It's a really hard concept to describe.

It means that one has been unjustly treated or asking someone to put up with something that is unfair.

So some examples

委屈你 - This says "委屈 you".
It is said when you are asking someone to do something that that's unfair or below expectations. If someone were staying in my house and all I have to offer is a cot, I may say "委屈 that you have to sleep on my cot". It's acknowledging that this is unfair or not great. It's saying "Please put up with this sub par or unfair situation".

I remember as a rebellious teen full of attitude, my mom asked me to do something and I did it reluctantly (full of attitude) and she asked sarcastically "is it 委屈 that you have to do this?"
She was asking me if I really felt it was that unfair or unreasonable that I had to do whatever chore I was being tasked with.

委屈 can be used both as a verb and a noun. I can feel 委屈 like I feel happy. I can also be asked to 委屈 myself like I can be asked to tolerate something.

If someone said to me "don't 委屈 yourself", they are essentially saying "don't force yourself to tolerate an unfair or unreasonable situation". All translations for this term has fallen flat. Really, the best translation would probably be "be good to yourself", but then that also fails to capture the sentiment.

辛苦 is often gets translated as working hard, but fails to capture the meaning.

The individuals characters:
辛： to suffer, labour

苦：bitter (same as the eating bitterness in an earlier post above).

pronounced "xin ku" in mandarin, "sun fu" in Canto.

The term means to work hard in a laborious and suffering manner.

It can also be used to say "Thank you" to someone and acknowledge their hard work.

Example uses:

My dad used to own/run a restaurant and we would say 今日好辛苦. "Today was a long, hard, labour intensive day that caused a lot of bodily suffering".

Maybe at the end of the workday he would say to his staff 辛苦你. (辛苦you). Just like there are many ways to say "sorry" in an above post, there are many ways to say "thanks" in Chinese. This is a deeper level of thanks that acknowledges their hard work and is saying I appreciate what you went through and the strain and suffering this causes. There are other way to say thank you as well that are deeper than the typical. 有勞 is similar (minus the suffering) and 多虧 (this deserves its own post).

”Hard work" alone is an insufficient translation since we have other terms to describe that. I was 勤力 in my studies (I worked hard) but I didn't have the same kind of bodily suffering that working long hours in the restaurant gets you.

辛苦 is a combination of hard work and physical suffering.

Following from yesterday, 多虧 is an expression that deserves some insight.
pronounced "duo kui" in Mandarin, "doa kuai" in Canto (very similar to be honest).

It is translated as "thanks" or "luckily".

What it means:
多 means "lots of"
虧 means deficits, loss, disadvantage.

Going back to the concept of "eating" things, 吃虧 means to eat, or take a loss.
多虧 is very counter intuitive. Though it literally means "lots of loss" it is a way to express appreciation for someone.

If I said 多虧你 (Lots of loss to you), I am essentially saying "Thank you, this was a big effort at large expense to yourself to get this done or pull this off".

If I said 多虧有你 (lots of loss, having you), it means "luckily we have you“ or "fortunately, thanks to your efforts".

This one took me a lot of analysis and I'm not even sure I have it all right.

It is another way of saying "Thanks for taking one for the team" but in a more formalized and polite way.

And what made this one so hard is that eating a loss is bad, but lots of loss is good (in a sense).

I also want to go into the other forms of saying thank you.

有勞 -(you lao) literally means "there is effort". It means you are acknowledging that the person put in effort (This is more mando I think and I've honestly only ever seen it used in dramas so I don't know if people actually use this irl)

唔該 - "ng gai" this is very Canto. It means to give thanks for doing a thing like holding a door open.

謝謝 - xie xie - this is your standard base level thank you.

Just like multiple ways to say sorry, we have multiple ways to say thanks that get all rolled into one. I guess in Chinese, the levels of sincerity matter more?

承讓 is another term with no translation.

"Cheng rang" in Mando, "sing yeung" in canto.

The individual characters

承 - to support or be indebted to
讓 - to yield, to give way.

The term is said after a game or match. The winner says 承讓 as polite way to say "thanks for letting me win"

It's a graceful way to acknowledge the opponent and say "I didn't beat you, you let me win".

Being a good winner is as important as being a good loser.

We typically say "good game" in English but this takes it up a notch.

You may have seen Chinese spectators cheering on the Chinese team at various sporting events with signs that say 加油.

It is the equivalent of saying "go team go".

Translation
加- add
油 - oil

We are essentially saying "put more gas in the tank. Work harder".

In dramas when people say it to each other it gets translated so awkwardly. A parent might say encouraging words before an exam and add 加油. It often gets clumsily translated to "you can do it."

We are not nearly as optimistic in our words of encouragement. The presumption of success isn't there. Lol. I feel like this is so Asian parenting to say "work harder, put more oil in that tank" but without the believing in them part. You need to say that separately. And I try to usually.

Anyways, when you see signs at international sporting events, you now know what they say. Literally "add oil".

Anyone who is a fan of C-dramas is probably familiar with the term 江湖.

Literal translation is 'River, Lake".

Pronounced: "jiang hu" in Mandarin. "Gong Wu" in Cantonese.

One dictionary has it as "people wandering from place to place living by their wits eg fortune tellers, quack doctors, itinerant entertainers".
I've also seen this defined as "pugilist world." If you're like me, unfamiliar with that word it means a boxer or fighter. None of those definitions makes much sense.

If you watch enough Wuxia C dramas, you probably figured out it's the people who are outside of the government officialdom. There's the emperor and the ministers, then there's the people of the 江湖.

The word exists outside of Wuxia novels too though. My father got caught up with the wrong people in the 60s and 70s in Hong Kong. If you know anything about the HK triads, they are basically the HK version of the Italian mafia. My dad emigrated and left that world behind but I had heard him and a friend reminisce about old friends and said that it wasn't easy surviving in the 江湖.

I think most Chinese people understand what the word means but if you asked them to define or describe it, they would hesitate and take an entire paragraph to paint a picture of what the word means. It's the people/society outside of the strict confines of the social structure/ legal framework but not necessarily people doing illegal things.

You don't hear it much in modern society except with relation to those outside of the law.

I'm happy for anyone else to chip into this definition too b/c while like I said, we all have an idea of what this means, it's a mess to describe, and probably a little different how each of us interpret it.

P.S. 江湖 (River lake) is pretty much the opposite of 江山 (River mountain). The latter is used to describe the empire. The emperor might say "my 江山" to say the empire that he rules whereas the emperor has no say in what happens in the 江湖.