Scenario: Lola goes on vacation from Rome to New York City for the first time. Lola is a young bright girl who had studied English in Italy but has never really practiced until quite recently. She begins traveling around and she uses an expression to describe herself walking around but it doesn't make sense. She begins looking into her translator and realizes that it can't be explained in English or Italian. The expression can't be translated and she doesn't understand why?
Have no fear because there is a good reason for this.
There are over 250,000 words in the English Language that are changing every day. Many people presume that English being one the most spoken languages across the globe would have the ability to convey human experiences. However, this is not true for any language. Some idioms and expressions have no translation. Therefore, it is easy to misinterpret information. When multilingual people refer to words that can't be translated into another language. This means the word can be lost from one culture to another.
This maybe unacceptable to some, but it occurs because different words and expressions are used differently in cultural contexts. This shapes the meaning of the word. Meanings of words are often lost through this change.
Take this into consideration:
One said, the difficult part about learning a new language isn't the vocabulary and different grammar forms, but creating an ability for one to develop an inner reflex that responds to words. When someone hears a word, they don't think of the dictionary definition, but rather the feeling of imagery that comes with it (Wire, 2010). Words that aren't translatable into our language shouldn't be unappreciated because of their lack of description, but for the sake of taste and text of the new language. Understanding new language expressions or meaning is like fine dining. The joy doesn't come from a food taste but from the full experience of actually enjoying the whole meal all together--text and context.
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