Loosely translated by my very rough Chinese knowledge, "the lucky star shines from up high" First 2 hanzi meaning "fortune" and "star" The last 2 meaning "high/distant" and "shine"
Give that to google translate, it has a mental breakdown and translates it as a proper noun.
What does it actually mean? It's an extremely contextual way of wishing someone the best of luck in their future endeavors in Chinese languages. This is one of many "chengyu" (成语) which are 4-syllable chinese proverbs. Most of them can't be translated in a sensical way. Chinese languages have a very simple grammatical structure, and can be read through context alone (knowing radicals and the ability to break hanzi down into radicals really helps) so it's possible to remove all of the context that isn't necessary, end up with 4 characters, and still have a phrase a native speaker understands or can easily decipher. A lot of them come from folk tales as well, so the references are typically general knowledge.
But idioms of a language can't really be translated directly; they either have to be defined instead, or explained in a short essay, defeating the purpose of originally a short saying.
Anyway, what's a weird untranslatable word or saying from your heritage? This includes English.
(The chengyu in the image is "chisel wall, steal light" which is a proverb meaning to work hard to at your studies, another Chinese proverb that makes no sense in translation. There's an old story associated with it, I'm sure.)
Isn't it strange there's always words or phrases that can't be translated, just defined in another language?
Not really. We can always describe things in terms of other things. But languages are morping, developing and imperfect things. It is only natural that one language will acquire a word for something like say, schadenfreude, which is something so prominent in English countries too that its previous nonexistence makes little sense. But we can explain and understand it.
I think pretty much any language has some words like that. Often they become culturally and contextually influenced and so for them to really make sense you'd need to understand that too. A little like your example.
We have fika where I live. Which is essentially a lunch-like thing but you consume a snack, drink or something else tasty, or sometimes filling, usually in the company of someone else but not always. That is fully servicable for all intents and purposes but most people here would still feel it doesn't do the term justice. It is also a special social form, it plays into work, dating and family relations and it does it in uniquely different ways all the time. Describing each instance of it is rather easy, if lengthy. But ultimately words carry as much contextual meaning as they do literal. Some things because of this need to be experienced and not just explained.
A direct transaction of this phrase would be utter gibberish in any other language.
In English this phrase has dozens of interpretations from who are saying this phrase to who it's being said to. From different social economic classes to different genders, even intending to be ironic to unironic.
Second nature phrases come with hundreds of years of culture that created that phrase. Its common to say people who know multiple languages on a fluent level have multiple personalities. Not in the crazy person way but experiencing our marvelous world to a larger degree then only one language individuals like myself can experience.
I recall reading how there's many more words to describe snow in the innuit language. But yeah its interesting there may be concepts or ideas people in other languages dont even know about because of translation difficulties
Not really, I always figured that there is jargon from every language that is unique to them. It's why mistranslations happen even in the most professional cases.
