The problem of "untranslatability"
Main article: Untranslatability
The question of whether particular words are untranslatable is often debated, with lists of "untranslatable" words being produced from time to time. These lists often include words such as saudade, a Portuguese word as an example of an "untranslatable". It translates quite neatly however as "sorrowful longing", but does have some nuances that are hard to include in a translation; for instance, it is a positive-valued concept, a subtlety which is not clear in this basic translation.
Some words are hard to translate only if one wishes to remain in the same grammatical category. For example, it is hard to find a noun corresponding to the Russian почемучка (pochemuchka) or the Yiddish שלימזל (shlimazl), but the English adjectives "inquisitive" and "jinxed" correspond just fine.
Journalists are naturally enthusiastic when linguists document obscure words with local flavor, and are wont to declare them "untranslatable", but in reality these incredibly culture-laden terms are the easiest of all to translate, even more so than universal concepts such as "mother". This is because it is standard practice to translate these words by the same word in the other language, borrowing it for the first time if necessary. For example, an English version of a menu in a French restaurant would rarely translate pâté de foie gras as "fat liver paste", although this is a good description. Instead, the accepted translation is simply pâté de foie gras, or, at most, foie gras pâté. In some cases, only transcription is required: Japanese 山葵 (わさび) translates into English as wasabi. A short description or parallel with a familiar concept is also often acceptable: わさび may also be translated as "Japanese horseradish" or "Japanese mustard".
The more obscure and specific to a culture the term is, the simpler it is to translate. For example, the name of an insignificant settlement such as Euroa in Australia is automatically just "Euroa" in every language in the world that uses the Roman alphabet, whilst it takes some knowledge to be aware that Saragossa is Zaragoza, Saragosse, etc. or that China is 中国, Cina, Chine, and so forth.
The problem of common words
The words that are truly difficult to translate are often the small, common words. For example, in all its various uses the verb "to get" covers nearly seven columns of the most recent version of the Robert-Collins French-English dictionary. The same is true for most apparently simple, common words, such as "go" (seven columns), "come" (four and a half columns), and so forth.
Cultural aspects can complicate translation, as people from England, France or China would likely describe or draw "bread", du pain or 面包 (miàn bāo) as their culturally common bread - an idea best expressed by their word for bread, rather than another language's word which comes pre-loaded with its cultural referrent.
Differing levels of precision inherent in a language also play a role. For example, of one is discussing a location that is nearer to the listener than the speaker in Spanish, one would say ahí; if it is away from both interlocutors one would say allí; and if there are connotations or directions involved such as "near there", "over yonder" or "on that side", it would be best to say allá. Conversely, in colloquial French, all three of these concepts of different "theres" as well as the concept of "here" will likely be expressed with the word là.
A language may contain expressions which refer to concepts that do not exist in another language. For example, the French "tutoyer"' and "vouvoyer" would both be translated into English as "to address as 'you'", since the singular informal second person pronoun is archaic in English. Yet this simplistic translation completely destroys the meaning of the verbs: "vouvoyer" means to address using the formal "you" form ("vous"), whereas "tutoyer" means to use the informal form ("tu"). Indeed, when English was using the "thou" pronoun, "thou" as a verb would have been a translation for "tutoyer"; today, it is difficult to give a concise translation that captures the nuances of "tu" vs. "vous."
The second-person "you" is used in certain regions of the United States, however. Though not a precise transaction, "y'all" is a familiarized version of "you" and adequately conveys the sense of the second-person plural. This is used mostly in the southern and southeastern United States. In some regions (such as in Texas and nearby regions), y'all is often used as a second-person singular as well.
The problem often lies in failure to distinguish between translation and glossing. Glossing gives a short (usually one-word) equivalent for each term. Translation decodes the meaning and intent at the text level (not the word level or even sentence level) and then re-encoding them in a target language. Words like saudade and שלימזל are hard to "gloss" into a single other word, but given two or more words they can be perfectly adequately "translated". Similarly, depending on the context, the meaning of the French word "tutoyer", or Spanish "tutear", could be translated as "to be on first name terms with". "Bread" has perhaps a better claim to being untranslatable, since even if we resort to saying "French bread", "Chinese bread", "Algerian bread", etc. we are relying on our audience knowing what these are like.