ILLUSTRATION BY JULIANNA BRION

Un artículo de The New Yorker titulado así, The Glossary of Happiness, de Emily Anthes, desarrolla una reflexión muy interesante sobre los términos para designar la felicidad o las variadas ideas vinculadas a ella en diferentes países. De ahí, su reflexión deriva hacia el préstamo de palabras entre idiomas para colmar vacíos –o perezas o inercias– sobre conceptos, sensaciones, emociones, percepciones que difieren enrtre culturas. A destacar el proyecto de “lexicografía positiva”…

«[…] Soon after Lomas returned to the University of East London, where he is a lecturer in applied positive psychology, he launched the Positive Lexicography Project, an online glossary of untranslatable words. To assemble the first edition—two hundred and sixteen expressions from forty-nine languages, published in January—he scoured the Internet and asked his friends, colleagues, and students for suggestions. Lomas then used online dictionaries and academic papers to define each word and place it into one of three overarching categories, doing his best to capture its cultural nuances. The first group of words referred to feelings, such as Heimat (German, “deep-rooted fondness towards a place to which one has a strong feeling of belonging”). The second referred to relationships, and included mamihlapinatapei (Yagán, “a look between people that expresses unspoken but mutual desire”), queesting (Dutch, “to allow a lover access to one’s bed for chitchat”), and dadirri (Australian Aboriginal, “a deep, spiritual act of reflective and respectful listening”). Finally, a third cluster of words described aspects of character. Sisu falls in this category, as do fēng yùn (Mandarin Chinese, “personal charm and graceful bearing”) and ilunga (Tshiluba, “being ready to forgive a first time, tolerate a second time, but never a third time”).»

Sigue en… The New Yorker