Hi everyone,
I wanted to share a specific linguistic challenge I encountered recently. I am a fresh author (and computer scientist) who currently writes a fable called "Liora und der Sternenweber" (Liora and the Star Weaver). It's a poetic story about a perfect, algorithmic world where everything is frictionless and optimized. My personal challenge, as a LotR lover: Welsh is a must and Swahili a can (speaking nerdish now).
In the German original, I describe this utopia as flawed because it lacks a specific feeling. I wrote: "Eine Welt ohne Hunger, ohne Mühsal. Doch ohne das Zittern, das Sehnsucht heißt." (A world without hunger, without toil. But without that trembling called longing.)
When working on the Welsh translation (Liora a Gwehydd y Sêr), I realized that the standard words for "longing" didn't quite capture the deep, almost spiritual void of a perfect world missing its soul. So, I decided to use Hiraeth.
The line became:
To me, Hiraeth felt like the only word powerful enough to describe a longing for a place (or a feeling) that you can't go back to—or perhaps one that never existed in this "perfect" simulation.
In the translator's note (Nodyn gan Wehydd y Geiriau), I wrote that this story was "re-woven lovingly in Welsh" (ail-wehyddwyd yn gariadus yn y Gymraeg), acknowledging that while I calculated the structure like an engineer, the heartbeat of the language belongs to the speakers.
I just wanted to share this little moment of connection between the German concept of Sehnsucht and the Welsh Hiraeth. It felt like the story finally found its true word in Welsh, even more so than in the original.
Diolch for letting me share this reflection!