1206: Lost in Translation (Color Week: 7) Mar 29, 2018

While it is fairly straightforward to translate English's 'green' to French's 'verde' [1] as words to describe nouns, what is less easy is the words to describe colors. English has words like 'light' and 'dark' which refer to the relative amount of white or black in the mixture; because that is fairly technical, it is often (though not always) easily translated, but other modifiers like 'warm' and 'cool' are harder to pin down exactly. While reds and yellows are easy to identify as warm, and blues are cool, combinations thereof, such as various shades or purples may be more interpretive, debatably. Other languages, such as Hanunó'o have adjectives that translate to 'wet/fresh' and 'dry' to describe colors, that is simply not done in English. Furthermore, there are plenty of colors that are compounded for the effect modification, such as 'forest green'. Sometimes, these cultural differences make direct translation difficult.

Today is the last day of Color Week, thank you!

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