Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words

Did you know that the Japanese have a word to express the way sunlight filters through the leaves of trees? Or that there’s a Swedish word that means a traveller’s particular sense of anticipation before a trip?

Lost in Translation brings the nuanced beauty of language to life with 50 beautiful ink illustrations. The words and definitions range from the lovely, such as goya, the Urdu word to describe the transporting suspension of belief that can occur in good storytelling, to the funny, like the Hawaiian pana po'o, which describes the act of scratching your head to remember something you’ve forgotten.

This is a collection is full of surprises that will make you savour the wonderful, elusive, untranslatable words that make up a language.