When it comes to transllating a word that dosent have a direct welsh counterpart- how do you usually go about it?
Oooooh, a fun question! Funnily enough, I was just on the hunt for the Welsh translation for 'self esteem' the other day! This is my usual method:
First, I check online sources such as Geiriadur yr Academi, BydTermCymru or Wiciadur. I find that BydTerm usually does the trick with more 'modern' words, as it directly searches the Welsh Government's comms, while Geiriadur yr Academi is the best for any older stuff.
If they draw a blank, I'll then scour the internet to see if anyone else has tried translating the word before. My usual trick is to search the word in quotation marks and then include 'Cymraeg' as a keyword - this helps ensure that the results include bilingual websites. Usually, if a word doesn't have a direct translation, there'll be a pretty similar word that can be used instead - that's what happened with 'self esteem', which is hunan barch in Welsh ('self respect'). Not quite an exact translation, but it does the job!
If it's modern internet slang, I sack off any research; I'm not going to find 'rizz' being used by the Welsh Government. Instead, I just imagine how I, a fluent Welsh speaker, would naturally use it. In the case of 'rizz', I'd just say that - it would sound unnatural to Welshify it, especially as 'charisma' is already just carisma in Welsh.
But if it's something like 'fuckton', I'll just create a new word by directly translating it - because why say 'fuckton' when the wonderful ffwcdunnell is an option? The building blocks are there, so I just translate them and it usually works out fine.
Sometimes I focus less on the word and more on the actual vibe of the word. Take 'mutual' (as in Tumblr mutuals), for example: I initially translated this as cyd-ddilynwr (co-follower), but it wasn't quite right. It sounded too formal; it didn't capture the very online vibe of being a mutual.
So what do I use now? Cymrawd, meaning 'comrade'. Not a direct translation by any means, but very Tumblr. The word might not mean the same, but the vibe is very much still there!
Lastly, if it sounds extremely funny to just spell an English slang word using Welsh phonetics, I'll do that. Delulu? Delwlw.
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