Untranslatable Words

This set of cards define some of our favourite words from the world’s languages and married them up with complementary images to create cards that bring some of our most important feelings into focus. We’ve created them to prompt greater reflection about the nature of language and the emotions.

Example Cards

• DUENDE (Spanish): A heightened sense of emotion created by a moving piece of art.

• FORELSKET (Norwegian): The euphoric feeling at the beginning of love. We can’t believe someone so perfect has wandered into our lives. They enhance and complete us. We might report: ‘I was overpowered by forelsket as our fingers interlaced…’

• YŪGEN (Japanese): Gives a name to a mood in which one feels that the universe as a whole possesses a mysterious and elusive beauty. Moonlight, snow on distant mountains, birds flying very high in the evening sky, and watching the sun rise over the ocean all feed this sensibility.

  
  

  We’ve designed these cards to reflect the excitement we find in encountering and old photograph or an object in a flea market or antique stall, one that feels familiar yet foreign and is thus infinitely evocative.
  
  

  How to Use the Cards

  You might…

  • Turn to these cards to find a word that speaks most powerfully to your mood.

  • Sort through and select a card to send to a friend as a memento of a particular feeling you associate with them.

  • Play a game with your partner by taking it in turns to remember a time you may have felt or known the untranslatable word to be most true.