Folium: The Glossary of Happiness via NewYorker
Folium: The Glossary of Happiness via NewYorker
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Languages often get “lost in translation,” and this phenomenon can be due to a simple mistake or due to the fact that one language was not quite able to capture the essence of a word’s meaning in another language. Sometimes in other languages there are certain words that will only makes sense to native speakers. Tim Lomas first experienced a word that was “untranslatable” when at the fourth annual Congress of the International Positive Psychology Association. He was introduced to the word “sisu” which in Finnish means “a person who can overcome extraordinary challenges.” This intrigued Tim. The word “sisu” had so much more depth and meaning in Finnish than it did in English. He began thinking of a way that all of the words similar to “sisu” in meaning could be placed in one place so that all could go and experience the connection of words and meaning.
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[Could understanding other cultures’ concepts of joy and well-being help us reshape our own?] – NewYorker
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Tim at the time was student at the University of East London where he lectured on positive psychology. He wanted to compile words in foreign languages that described positive traits, feelings, experiences, and states of being that had no direct counterparts in English. He thought it would be fascinating to gather all these in one place. Then after lots of research and scouring the internet and friends, he launched the Positive Lexicography Project, or an online glossary of untranslatable words. He used online dictionaries and academic papers to define each word and place it into three overarching categories, doing his best to capture its cultural distinctions. He started with a section on feelings, then on to relationships and finally aspects of character. This allowed readers to quickly and efficiently search for a word in any certain language and look for the real meaning of that word and use in a positive way.
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(Play around with untranslatable words, try it out!)
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While in the process of all the writing Tim came to more of a conclusion that perhaps you can start to link culture to geography to climate. Lomas acknowledged that this idea was a speculative one. Linguists have long debated the links between language, culture, and cognition. The theory of linguistic relativity posits that language itself the specific tongue that we happen to speak shapes our thoughts and perceptions. Tim believes that language affects thought in more moderate ways. Tim argues that studying a culture’s emotional vocabulary may provide a window into how its people see the world. We are able to see the “things that they value, or their traditions, or their aesthetic ideals…”
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Since January, the glossary has grown to nearly four hundred entries from sixty-two languages, and visitors to the Web site have proposed new entries and refined definitions. Lomas, who speaks some French and Mandarin, acknowledges that it can be tricky to isolate words from their cultural context. Lomas is currently using untranslatable words to enumerate, classify, and analyze different types of love. It is important that we take a look at the words that we may not understand but to analyze a little bit more the world around us and we may be able to understand just how glorious life is and see the meaning behind different cultures and traditions. We don’t have to stay forever “lost in translation.”
Julie Martin
LEAF Editor & Contributor
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