Happiness: Found in Translation

 by Tim Lomas

Lomas describes how a broad word connoting emotion- such as happy- can sometimes be too broad, or simple, to describe what we’re feeling, even if it lies somewhere within the realm of ‘happy’. In essence, it means too much, and this can limit our breadth of vocabulary and understanding of emotion. 

Precise language can really help us to at first pinpoint, and then further enrich our understanding of our experiences. There have in fact been multiple scientific studies that aim to prove how a greater understanding of our emotional lives in turn greatly improves our wellbeing. 

English is actually quite a well-rounded language, but of course there are limitations. The feeling of experiencing an unfamiliar sensation or confusing emotion is a strange one. How are you supposed to register these thoughts without some way of articulating or defining them? ‘The limits of our language define the boundaries of our world.

In order to conceptualise feelings, we can find ‘untranslatable’ words in other languages, rendering our unfamiliar emotions, at last, translatable. English itself is estimated to be 41% from other languages, mainly French, Latin and Greek. Lomas describes these words as ‘loanwords’ that are words we ‘borrow’ before they become integrated within our language. Before we establish these new words, the language is known as having a ‘semantic gap’, an area of experience not defined by a word.

Lomas refers to ‘happiness’ and the word ‘happy’ as a broad one. One of these branches of happiness can be that of ambivalence- connoting the more complex feelings that can be surmised as partially happy, but are not entirely positive in meaning. Words, just like emotions, can also have layers or juxtapositions in order to connote the complexity of the feelings they are intricately describing. Essentially, ambivalent words can be a mix of positive and negative, light and dark elements- 

‘ambi’ meaning both and ‘valence’ referring to emotional tone, either positive or negative. 

Lomas refers to the paradigmatic example of longing, which is both happy and sad- painful  yet hopeful yearning is the general feeling of the word, and can be interpreted as such. 

Only recently have western cultures began to appreciate  this juxtaposition of language and ambivalent lexicon, whereas eastern cultures are far more familiar with dynamic language and relational opposites, such as the yin yang motif of Taoism. 

Tim Lomas, Happiness--Found in Translation: A Glossary of Joy from Around the World

Tarcherperigee, 2019