Translating Culture: 5 Intriguing Japanese Words We Need in English
I wish these words existed in my native language
The Internet is full of articles with titles such as “5 untranslatable words in the X language”.
This is not one of those articles. I’m not going to claim that any of the words below are “untranslatable”.
What I am going to do is introduce five Japanese words that are able to capture certain specific situations so accurately and succinctly that I wish they existed in my native language of English.
I have deliberately chosen words that I have heard native speakers use in everyday conversation. You won’t find any unconventional, outdated, historic or purely aesthetic terms here. So if you want to know about “ikigai”, “kintsugi” or “wabi-sabi”, you’ll have to look elsewhere ;)
1) 推し (おし, oshi)
First up is a relatively recent word.
Are you a fan of a famous sports player, singer, or actor? Do you want to support them in any way you can? If so, they are your “oshi”.
Any activities you do to support them (for example, attending their matches, watching their movies, buying their albums, etc) are 推し活 （おしかつ, oshikatsu). In this word, “katsu” （活）means “action” or “activity”.
The term “oshikatsu” comes from the culture of supporting pop groups, especially large idol groups such as AKB48 (a girl group consisting of forty-eight members).
As Yuko explains in her article, these idol groups are cleverly marketed in ways that actively encourage fans to spend a lot of time, money and effort supporting them. For example, some idol groups’ CDs come with special tickets that grant the holder 10 seconds of handshake time with their favourite member of the group. Some hard-core fans have been known to buy hundreds of CDs just so they can spend a long time shaking hands with their “oshi”.
2) ありがた迷惑 (ありがためいわく, arigata-meiwaku)
Have you ever had the experience in which someone intends to do you a “favour”, but it actually ends up being more of a hindrance than a help? This is arigata-meiwaku.
ありがた “arigata” = thank you
迷惑 “meiwaku” = annoying
A possible translation could be “an unwelcome kindness”.
3) ギリギリ (ぎりぎり, giri-giri)
You take a test with a pass mark of 60, and you get 61%. You passed “giri-giri”.
You manage to catch the train by jumping on just as it’s leaving the station. You caught the train “giri-giri”.
Your country has a referendum to decide whether or not to leave a major international union, and the “yes” vote wins by a margin of 2%. The result was very “giri-giri”.
As you can see, “giri-giri” means something like “just”, “barely” or “by the skin of one’s teeth”.
Notes for Japanese language geeks: “giri-giri” comes from the word 限り “kagiri”, meaning “limit”. Technically, it can be written thus: 限り限り, however it is usually written in either hiragana or katakana.
“Giri-giri” could be considered “gitai-go”, one of three types of Japanese onomatopoeia. To learn more about the unique features of Japanese onomatopoeia, check out Miyuki’s article.
4) こちらこそ (kochira koso)
Scenario 1:
You’re working on a project together with a coworker, and they say: “Thank you for your help.”
You want to say “No, thank you!”, to emphasis that it is you who should be thanking them.
Scenario 2:
A business client says: “I’m looking forward to meeting you.”
You want to reply that you are looking forward to meeting them even more than they are looking forward to meeting you.
Scenario 3:
Your friend says: “I found our study session really useful.”
You want to reassure your friend that you found it useful too, even more useful than they found it.
In each of these scenarios you can reply with “kochira koso!”
This phrase is made of two words:
“Kochira”, which literally means “this side” or “here”, and is often used as an indirect way of referring to oneself.
“Koso” is a word that emphasises the word that comes before it. “XXX koso” means something like “especially XXX”.
So “kochira koso” means something like “No, it is I who should be saying that!” Or more casually: “Right back at you!”
5) 渋い (しぶい, shibui)
The formal meaning of this adjective is “astringent”. It can be used to describe an astringent flavour, but often it describes an elegant or austere aesthetic or style.
Usually it has a positive nuance. It could refer to something old-fashioned, but is cool because it’s interesting or unusual. Think vintage style, but more subtle and subdued. It can also be used to describe something obscure or niche that only a true aficionado would understand.
One year I went to a traditional stationary shop in Ginza to buy some New Year’s cards to send to my friends. Being a student of shodō (Japanese calligraphy) I chose some traditional and unusual cards which depicted ancient Chinese versions of the kanji (Japanese characters) of the year-animal of the upcoming year.
The cards I received from my friends were illustrated with cute pictures of Disney characters, Hello Kitty, etc. I realised that the cards I had sent were decidedly “shibui”.
(Tokyo residents may notice that the first character in “shibui” 渋, is also the first character in Tokyo’s inner-city ward of Shibuya — 渋谷. The second character 谷 means “valley”).
What words do you wish had direct translations in your native language?
