Emmanuel Macron recently vowed to “emmerder” the unvaccinated, stirring not only political controversy, but also a linguistic debate. The verb, which is derived from the noun “merde”, was translated to “piss off”, “put them in the shit” and “annoy them”, conveying varying degrees of severity.
The complexities surrounding the rendering of the French president’s vulgar choice of expression got us thinking about untranslatable words. Here’s a much lighter one!
