Lost in Translation cover

Lost in Translation

by Ella Frances Sanders

"An artistic collection of 50 drawings featuring unique, funny, and poignant foreign words that have no direct translation into English. Did you know that the Japanese have a word to express the way sunlight filters through the leaves of trees? Or that there's a Swedish word to describe the reflection of the moon across the water? The nuanced beauty of language is even more interesting and relevant in our highly communicative, globalized modern world. Lost in Translation brings this wonder to life with 50 ink illustrations featuring the foreign word, the language of origin, and a pithy definition. The words and definitions range from the lovely, such as goya, the Urdu word to describe the transporting suspension of belief that can occur in good storytelling, to the funny, like the Hawaiian pana po'o, which describes the act of scratching your head to remember something you've forgotten. Each beautiful, simple illustration adds just the right amount of visual intrigue to anchor the words and their meanings"-- "An artistic collection of 52 drawings featuring unique, funny, and poignant foreign words that have no direct translation into English"--

Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?