Dan,
I'm writing this to you because it's more than a contribution to the new site. You can use as much of it as you think belongs.
I happen to think that no word is untranslatable into English. You may have to use a phrase or a sentence but a really clever translator like William Weaver or Richard Howard or Alastair Reid can do it. Do it in English, especially now American English, because English is a hybrid language and because our supposed class structure is fluid and because we're living through an age of linguistic change akin to the Elizabethan. The English-writing East Indians are now taking the lead.
A good indication of translatability by takeover is the many Yiddish words now in English dictionaries, like shlep or shmuck--there are tens of others. But other Yiddish words, like yichus or k'velen haven't made it because the feelings behind them are too subtle. Yichus means good blood, well born, but if you don't live up to the promise of your family stature, then you haven't really got it. k'velen means to glow and beam with inexpressible pride and happiness.
(All of these words are transliterations from a Yiddish written in Hebrew characters.)
And that's the real untranslatability of words in other languages, words imbedded into their languages over time. All the other contributions take that into consideration very well. What you canšt carry from one language into another is the thrill of using it in a context that comes from the word's belonging to its linguistic roots, habits, and family. Also includes facial and bodily gestures.
All to the Good,
Irving
www.irvingweiss.net
After I sent it off I thought of another sense of untranslatability. How do you "translate" funky not just to a foreigner but to an American who never paid attention to jazz or rock, or to an older American who went through the Sixties gritting his teeth?? My 1968 Random House desk dictionary doesn't carry it. The online
http://dictionary.reference.com/
carries it as slang, so its untranslatability would seem to be specialized. Still, the same online dictionary adds the following:
"When asked which words in the English language are the most difficult to define precisely, a lexicographer would surely mention funky."
All to the Good,
Irving
www.irvingweiss.net