If English replaced your ancestors’ native language(s), or you learned English as an additional language, what gets lost in translation for you? What concepts in your native language don’t translate into English? Which English words don’t translate back?
As I recently watched the inspiring story of Professor Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, I followed shifts between spoken English and English subtitles seamlessly, until one spoken English word surprised me: “breakthrough.” It touched me, that these valiant women who struggled nonviolently for environmental and democratic rights would borrow that word. It fit.
Tell me! What word(s) would you like me to borrow from another language?
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