The book Found in Translation: How Language Shapes our Lives and Transforms the World talks about how words are associated with different metaphors in different cultures. One example they give is intaxicato solar. This means food poisoning. It looks as though it means intoxicated as though someone had too much to drink. A "false friend." A false cognate means that it looks as though they come from the same linguistic root but have different meaning. Another example is the word okoru in Japanese. Although it looks as though it may resemble the word to occur, it means to get angry.
The book goes on to say that certain brands like Mitsubishi have to rename their Pajero module and Honda Fitta module in particular countries that have a different connotation of a word.
The word gift means poison in German. The Online Etymology Dictionary
says that it was often associated with prescribed medicine. People used
the word gift as in a potion by a doctor and it came to mean something
of tangible from a knowing person.
The author tells how jokes in some languages are missed such as in the Harry Potter series Lord Voldemolt is "Tom Marvolo Riddle" is an anagram for I am Lord Voldemort. The Bulgarian translation is Mersvoluko whose anagram translates to "And here I am, Lord Voldemort".
The word in Hebrew originally were tohu meant formless and vohu meant empty. In French today toha bohu meant chaos and confusion. These words became associated with chaos later on in Hebrew.
Sometimes the environment makes it necessary to invent words in order to present the concepts behind them. For example to explain to the Hmong people about cancer at UC Davis they compiled an English to Hmong dictionary for medical terms. Martin Luther when translating the scriptures invented words so he can explain to people Latin concepts such as Machtwort (authoritative guidance).
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