Untranslated aesthetic concepts force readers to feel meaning between words

Evidence

Nuanced concepts cannot be fully translated, where meaning has to be felt in between the words, so to speak—as when Raza and his mother invoke the incomparable Japanese aesthetic idea of the value of imperfection and transience, “wabi-sabi” (200). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 422

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Wabi-sabi as a worked example of untranslatable vernacular meaning that translation always waters down.