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A comment on Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and abandon languages. Parent comment

Re:Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and aba... by Typhon on Sunday May 15, 2016 @07:30PM (#11703285)
It all depend on what you count as connotation, but I'd argue that if anything can be expressed verbally, then it can be translated. There is no such thing as untranslatability.
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Re:Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and aba... by Swizec on Sunday May 15, 2016 @07:56PM (#11703373)
One thing that's very hard to translate comes from my native language - Slovenian. The grammatical number 2.

The same way most languages have singular and plural, Slovenian also has dual. It's much handier than always specifying "two somethings". Very few languages still have this feature. English for instance only has residual traces left.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number)

You can translate it, of course, but it's going to look and feel awkward.

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Re:Can Multilingualism Survive?: How cities preserve and aba... by WildUtah on Monday May 16, 2016 @02:49AM (#11704685)
"I'd argue that if anything can be expressed verbally, then it can be translated."

Have you made a serious effort to translate jokes, poetry, or advertising slogans between unrelated languages before you made that assertion? Were your clients unequivocally satisfied with your work?

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