Niubi is a term of approbation, perhaps the greatest such term in colloquial Chinese. But though the denotation of niubi is embarrassingly plain, it’s connotations are far from obvious.
On the face of it, niubi is not untranslatable at all: the characters niu and bi can be rendered into English with great precision by the words – and I beg your pardon – ‘cow pussy’, niu being the zoological reference, bi the anatomical. On a good day it seems that any word or phrase could be rendered into English with enough care, even if the word itself vanished and were detectable only through a subtle ruffling of the surrounding text.īut on a bad day, I'm trying to translate níubī. Sometimes I think there’s actually such a thing as an untranslatable word, sometimes I don’t. But look, you see? We also have an ineffable something a tragic ideal we’re not simply pulling a plow. It’s a token of value it adds a touch of solemn mystery to the work of translation, which otherwise consists mostly of nose-scratching, window-staring, and finding something to weight the book down with. The idea of ‘untranslatable words’ is very nice. By Eric Abrahamsen, published November 1, 2007, 3:06a.m.