Name: 【TED-Ed】One of the most difficult words to translate... - Krystian Aparta
Uploaded: 2016-09-13T23:29:50.000Z
Duration: 4 min
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Which is the hardest word to translate in this sentence?

Adverbs of manner

"Peprally" doesn't have a direct analog in a lot of languages and cultures,

But the hardest word there is actually one of the smallest: "you."

it's often impossible to accurately translate "you"

without knowing a lot more about the situation where it's being said.

To start with, how familiar are you with the person you're talking to?

Many cultures have different levels of formality.

These all may be slightly different "you's."

In many languages, the pronoun reflects these differences through what's known as the T–V distinction.

you would say "tu" when talking to your friend at school,

Ironically, it was actually the informal pronoun

while "you" was the formal and polite version.

when the English decided to just be polite all the time.

But the difficulty in translating "you" doesn't end there.

the "you" form depends on the listener's gender.

In many more, it depends on whether they are one or many,

some dialects use words like "y'all" or "youse" the same way.

Some plural forms, like the French "vous"

to show that the addressee is that much more important,

And a few languages even have a specific form

formality, number, and gender can all come into play at the same time.

In Spanish, "tu" is unisex informal singular,

and "ustedes" is the unisex formal plural.

it may come as a relief that some languages often leave out the second person pronoun.

In languages like Romanian and Portuguese,

the pronoun can be dropped from sentences

because it's clearly implied by the way the verbs are conjugated.

And in languages like Korean, Thai, and Chinese,

pronouns can be dropped without any grammatical hints.

Speakers often would rather have the listener guess the pronoun from context

than use the wrong one and risk being seen as rude.

18th-century scholar Wang Xihou was executed, along with his family,

simply for referring to the Emperor in a too familiar way.

So if you're ever working as a translator

and come across this sentence without any context:

you, your job is to translate 'you' for yourselves" ...

And to the volunteer community who will be translating this video into multiple languages: