One of China’s first lexicons dedicated to “untranslatable” words.
You’re on vacation. The sunset sky burns above as the sea rolls towards the shore. A wave of transcendental happiness washes over you. No, not just “happy,” but something unnamable, yet undeniably real. You grapple to find a word to capture this moment. Darn it, you should have taken those advanced language classes in high school.
Luckily, if you’ve studied Greek, you might say that you’re feeling ᾰ̓τᾰρᾰξῐ́ᾱν, a lucid tranquility, or you’re χαίρεις, “experiencing a divine grace.”
Indeed, language shapes emotions. Sapir and Whorf called this “linguistic determinism,” that languages determine our perception of the world. Then, if we limit ourselves to our mother tongue, do we lose a rich part of our humanity? After all, the untranslatable feelings lie buried beneath our linguistic consciousness.
Poets have wrestled with words to illuminate the ineffable, yet rarely reach the public. Perhaps only by breaking foreign words into cognitively digestible parts (i.e., translations) can we enrich the human existence for all.
At the Arete Lexicon — one of China’s first lexicons dedicated to “untranslatable” words — we hope to explore the emotional nuances of the human spirit.
Ars Literica, 2025