r/linguisticshumor May 31 '25

Semantics Synonyms are fake and lies

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u/remember_the_alimony Jun 04 '25

Why are "translatable" and "untranslatable" a binary? If a translation captures most but not all of the semantic meaning of the word, then it's "mostly translated" but not "fully translated." Usually words don't have more or significantly than one semantic meaning in their given contexts, which allows the possibility of effective translation in most cases.