difficult to translate: English words that are difficult to translate into Portuguese

[gusl]

This is a pretty good free dictionary. It seems to be the best free one ever since priberam.pt became paid. In parenthesis, you see the translation given, retranslated into English.

English words that are difficult to translate into Portuguese:
* cringe / wince / flinch (in PT, "contract oneself": all motion, no emotion)
* smirk (translation not found)
* grimace (in PT, fazer caretas "make faces", which could mean many things, and the usual meaning being related to mocking)
* wander ("to walk without a clear purpose") (10 translations offered, all of which feel unnatural to me. In vadiar and vagabundear, a negative connotation is introduced. perambular, errar and derivar seem too literary and not in current use. I like derivar and wish people used it.)
* stuffy (in PT, "annoyed", "proper", "annoying", "boring") Pat's definition: "overly concerned about propriety"

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UPDATE:
This is relevant:

The satellite-framed languages in our sample also tend towards greater specification of manner, probably because the lexicon provides a large collection of verbs that conflate manner with change of location (crawl, swoop, tumble, etc.), often conflating cause as well (dump, hurl, shove, etc.). In verb-framed languages, such elaboration is more of a “luxury,” since path and manner are elaborated in separate expressions, which are generally optional, and which are less compact in form [e.g., ‘exit flying (from the hole)’ vs. ‘fly out (of the hole)’].
As a consequence of these differences, it seems —at least in our data— that English and German narrations are characterized by a great deal of dynamic path and manner description, while Spanish, Hebrew, and Turkish narrations are less elaborated in this regard, but are often more elaborated in description of locations of protagonists and objects and of endstates of motion.

from Dan Slobin - The many ways to search for a frog: Linguistic typology and the expression of motion events

Comments

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

these are what I'd use, prolly different than br. portuguese

cringe = encolhar?
grimace = fazer cara feia?
wander = passear
stuffy = formal

[groen.livejournal.com]

Was it you I did a bad job trying to define "twinge" to, once upon a time?

[demarko (from livejournal.com)]

yea, I had a hard time finding a good word for wander in Spanish as well. Interesting to see that my choices were very similar. "Pasear" would be to me to take a stroll, which is walking for the purpose of walking to me.

"ambular" is closer to the word wander (walking without purpose), although no one uses/it's used differently (more on the side of loitering).

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

encolher = "shrink": is all motion, no emotion.

passear, like demarko says about Spanish pasear, is to take a stroll. Hardly a purposeless walk.

formal doesn't capture the specific meaning of "stuffy" and isn't as colorful.

Some grimaces aren't ugly faces... e.g. if you are being reflective or contemplative.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

maybe. "twinge" seems like a prototypical phonaestheme...

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, I would not use the word "grimace" of a reflective or contemplative face. I would only use it of an "ugly face". I think I may have heard it used your way, though.

[demarko (from livejournal.com)]

oh, interesting, my first guess was correct: the portuguese encolher is the same as the spanish encoger which is nowhere near cringe

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

that's because english is vastly superior in adjectives ;-)

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Yes. English is S-language.

[raflacerda.livejournal.com]

Flinch: Tremer na base?
Wander: Vagar