"Deep into the untranslatable" -Roland Barthes

"Japanese shadows" offers a list of Japanese concepts which resist translation in English along with a brief commentary. The interactions between these concepts are illustrated with links that form a complex pattern.

Language delineates the world. It is built around concepts which are subjectively defined. Some divides are natural : an arm can be broken down into its parts which are delimited by its joints : the wrist, the elbow, ... For more abstract concepts, the cut of a foreign language can be slightly different. In this respect it is interesting to dwell on the words that resist translation. They may highlight areas where the semantic patchwork is radically different.

Kichigai.com presents these words simply sorted by alphabetical order. The intension is not to provide in any way an exhaustive list as a dictionary or an encyclopaedia would do. The information lies both in the words that are presented and in the brief commentary which is proposed. This project is in French. (For more information see the intro).