Untranslatable

AKMA says
So David presses onward to the question, Are there things that can be said in Chinese that simply cannot be said in English, and vice versa And again I agree; the question is totally screwed up (though something in this area teases us with an elusive truth that entices people to take the easy, unfortunate way out by affirming the oversimplified version. But we can pursue this anon.

Stoppard meditated on this a long time ago in 'Professional Foul' - get it and read it if you haven't.

The example that sticks in my memory is that you can't say 'he said one thing but meant another' in French, because the translation comes out as

'Il dit quelque chose, mais il veut dire quelque chose d'autre'

If he didn't WANT to say something else, but was being deliberately disingenuous or misleading, you lose that sense in translation.