lmao she posted this and then blocked me
im pretty sure she believes that "harbor wave" is an acceptable translation for "tsunami," even though most of the world is familiar with the term "tsunami"
this reminds me of a story from NPR during one of the migrant crises on the border, about central americans who DIDN'T speak spanish, but rather some native american languages, and so border patrol had to look for people who knew those languages, and either knew at least spanish, or spanish+english
and so during interviews, officials say stuff like "everything you say is confidential and information will only be used by this agency etc etc"
and the translator lady was explaining how for that particular native american language, there was no word for "confidential/ity" so instead of """translating""" the word she had to straight up explain to the migrant what that concept is (i tried to look for this story but couldnt find it so heres this NYT article that talks basically about the same thing
https://archive.vn/6GVZE)
if thats what she means by "all those words have entries in the xyz dictionaries," then no wonder "professional" subs are shit; if i know what "sushi" is, i dont need some shoehorned english term to explain it; i know that kanji literally means "Han characters/letters" but when we say kanji we refer specifically to the ones used by the japs for their language, translating kanji as "han characters" will just create confusion, because in chinese theyre also called "han characters", so which is it?
this isnt about "mystical untranslatable words," its about culture closely tied to language, and how languages can pick up words from other languages without needed to create "translations" for them; ironically, she's right that translation isn't about 1:1 matches, which is why sometimes you just use the native word if its something that can be easily explained and understood; i know that taco is a tortilla with stuff inside, it would be fucking stupid to call it a "flour wrap" or whatever