You know, the reason I’m asking is that when you translate from English to other languages, you see “bastard” or “jerk” or “punk” and of course, except for bastard, there is no direct translation for the other terms.
Bastard literally means illegitimate child and fortunately the same meaning is used in other languages. (I somewhat tend to avoid it, as both my children are born out of wedlock, and I think it is not a good insult to use, nowadays).
Jerk literally means someone masturbates, but metaphorically someone who has a bad behaviour.
Punk… If you look on it in English-OtherLanguage dictionaries you will find definitions pertaining to the original meaning, someone belonging to the punk movement, punk band, punk rock, punk music, and very few other things.
It doesn’t help that punk in the original meaning is called “punk” in Greek, they don’t translate it. When you say “punk” in English, in Greece, you mean something very precise, it’s not a generic swear word at all.
The other meaning you find is a very bad Greek word (generic swear word) which cannot be used.
In Italian, one of the translations of punk (apart from the obvious musical stuff) is “teppista”, a word meaning hooligan, thug, ruffian, vandal. But “teppista” is never used as a swear word when you want to insult someone. It is a descriptive word that will be said by a newscaster on the evening news, reporting some violent and destructive incidents. As in “After today’s incidents, some teppistas burned cars and broke shop windows in the center of the city”.
I saw my translators write “teppista” on various occasions, always absolutely not suited to the situation, and I wondered why. Then I went to WordReference dictionary and I understood, that they had just slavishly copied what the dictionary said, with no regard of the drama situation and plot.
Another instance from W: After Kang Cheol saves the father from committing suicide from the terrace, and after their talk, the father remembers their conversation and then, half-sour half-affectionate, with a half smile, says to himself: “that arrogant punk!”. Which I thought was more affectionate than otherwise. Like saying “The little prick!”, but having started to like him as potential son-in-law.
So in that case, translating as teppista (hoolingan, ruffian and vandal) would have been vastly wrong! One has to be creative.
So these terms, which in English are used generically just as in the Korean word, are not helpful at all when you want to translate them to other languages.
That’s why I needed to go to the source Korean, to see which connotations the words have (the situations I have already seen in numerous dramas) so that I can find something equivalent in my language, bypassing the English translation.