One-for-one translations are not always possible. But that is not the same as saying a word is "untranslatable"
By R.L.G. | BERLIN
GEORGE W. BUSH didn’t actually say “The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for ‘entrepreneur’.” (Wouldn’t he, just, though?) But Ronald Reagan did actually say “I’m no linguist, but I’ve been told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for ‘freedom’.” His critics seized on the howler. Of course there is: svoboda.
But what if Reagan had been right? What if no Russian word corresponded exactly to the English freedom? Statements of the “no word for” type have two potential implications. One is that “Society X has been without item A for so long that it has no word for it.” Language reflects society, in this view. The other possibility makes language the cause rather than the effect: “Because society X lacks word A, its members are unable to understand A.”
Both of these arguments are usually wrong. How they are wrong can be illustrated through a third fallacy: “Society X had to borrow word A from society Y, so A is typically Yish and foreign to X.” This struck Johnson as he observed the posters for the upcoming German election. “Fürfaire Miete statt Rendite!”, say the Greens: “Fair rents instead of financial yields!” Or, a little way down the street: “Für faire Löhne—mindestens.” (“For fair pay—at the very least.”) Fair was added to the most famous German dictionary in 1915.
But some people apparently think that fairness is a particularly English concept. For example, here’s Bart Wilson in the Atlantic in 2009, as quoted by Mark Liberman of the University of Pennsylvania:
Did you know that fair is one-to-one untranslatable into any other language–that it is distinctly Anglo in origin?
But even if there is no exact one-to-one word foreign equivalent for fair—and of course no one has examined all of the world’s 6,000 languages to prove this—this does not mean that “fairness” is an “untranslatable”, particularly English concept. And it most certainly doesn’t support the more exotic conclusion, which Mr Wilson rejects, that without the word “fairness”, people who speak other languages are unable to think or talk about it.
How would we know? The first answer is common-sense reasoning: if Germans had no concept of fairness (and hence no word), they would not import the word from English. It would never occur to them; remember, in this scenario, the lack of “fairness” in the lexicon keeps people from thinking about or really understanding it.
The second is empirical. Are Germans “fair”? Whatever your definition, there’s clear evidence that they are. If fairness means “the rules apply to everyone” (Mr Wilson’s core definition), Germans are famously rule-abiding, as anyone who has been frowned at for cycling on the pavement can attest. Does fairness mean rewarding hard work? If so, Germany’s wealthy business leaders are evidence of fairness at work. If “fairness” is equitability, on the other hand, Germany’s generous “social market economy” provides a safety net that means the country’s prosperity is broadly shared.
Some value of “fairness” is, in fact, probably a human universal. Mr Wilson admits that, in experiments like economists' “ultimatum game”, people around the world behave in ways that show a mix of cold-blooded self-interest and “fairness” to others. A habit of letting rules be broken and cheaters win is hard for any society to maintain. This is true for many good evolutionary and game-theoretical reasons. So why would any language need to import the English “fair”?
The answer is boring, but has the virtue of being true: because English has been trendy for a long time. In the case of German, it is also because the word is a little lighter and more all-purpose than the German gerecht, which is better translated as “just”. The fact that different cultures conceive of fairness a bit differently proves very little. No two people understand fairness the same way, a problem which has led to playground fights, marital spats and bruised feelings since the dawn of time.
English borrows too, of course. There is no native English word that means ennui, exactly, with its perfect little package of weariness, boredom, emptiness and sadness. So English borrowed it. But does anyone think ennui did not exist among Anglophones before then? Of course not. Does it mean that ennui can't be explained in English? Again, of course not. ("Weariness, boredom, emptiness and sadness".) The fact of its borrowing doesn’t make ennui “untranslatable”, nor uniquely French. Language is a little bit like an economy. If a foreign country makes something useful, it’s often easier to import it rather than make it yourself.
Lists of “untranslatable words” bounce around the internet constantly. They’re good fun. But almost nothing is truly untranslatable. And that anyone would choose “fair” as a case in point is almost exactly backwards. If human universals exist, a belief in fairness is probably one of them. Just ask the Germans, obsessed this election season with the right mix of “social” and “market” in their social market economy. Left and right, greens and liberals: they don’t agree what fairness is. That’s why they’re having an election.
