In this blog I posted on my business Facebook account earlier this year, I talked about certain new words which only really exist in a given language https://www.facebook.com/GeorgeTrailTranslator/posts/1643066785783386

But the following are all words I invented myself, which I would love to see translated in other languages! I was quick to include a link to this blog on my LinkedIn account, for other professional translators everywhere to see.

* Dack (noun): possessions you have had for some time but you have never gotten around to enjoying / savouring. A book you have had for some time but never gotten around to reading is dack, a CD you have had for some time but never gotten around to listening to is dack; and so on and so forth.
* The froin factor (noun): you know when a table or chair is not stable even though it’s on all four of its legs (so to speak)? It can still be made to lean one way or the other until you put something under the foot of one of its legs to make it more steady. This is the table or chair’s froin factor.
* Sleepworking (verb): essentially, working with your mind switched off. Most household chores can be done while you’re listening to music or whatever and not really paying that much attention because it’s not necessary and you can take your time. You’ve heard of sleepwalking; well, this is sleepworking. By the way, I know better than to do my translation work sleepworking!
* Squain (adjective): said of something that is daft yet amusing and surprisingly engaging. To me, backmasking videos on Youtube and some of the humour of Joe Pasquale are good examples.
* Rimp moment (noun): a moment where you don’t quite know whether or not you should look shocked or offended in response to something.
* Graking someone (verb): imagine that you are on the phone with someone you don’t want to talk to, but you believe that if you hang up they will just call you back. So you hang up in the middle of a sentence that you’re saying to make them believe that it was a technical problem, not your hanging up, that resulted in the call ending. You have now graked them.
* Fatal (adjective): if you’re cool, good for you, but that’s a large step below being fatal. This was a word I came up with as a teenager – I just gave a new meaning to it – and I’m amazed I didn’t think of it when I started writing this blog. Then again, I am aware that the young people of today use “epic” in pretty much the same way. Look up “epic” on Urban Dictionary.
* Voonat (noun): another word I used as a teenager, this designates an individual “penny sweet”. Of course, they are usually sold in bags, but when I was at school you could buy them individually in the tuck shop for like only 1p or 2p each.
* PBA (Precedent-Based Assertion) (noun): I have talked about this in my professional translation blogs. “Myself, my own experience of translating has ‘taught’ me familiarity with what I call ‘the concept of precedent-based assertions’. It’s like this: you can probably remember at least one time in your life when you felt compelled to say something to someone else […] It’s just that your statement was just taken wholesale e.g. duplicated from the statement of someone else in some completely different matter – it may have actually been something someone said in a TV programme or something similar, and you felt some urge to say it because the original time you heard it, it just stuck with you; most likely because the e.g. TV programme appealed to you personally and that’s the only reason.” In other words, you borrow specific phrasing in your expression, or rather, assertion. The credibility of what you say in this manner may be undermined if someone else knew the facts behind it and, as such, they agreed that you betrayed a lack of being in control, or ignorance.
* Vorning (verb): another expression I came up with during my career as a translator. Sometimes people advertise a bigger translation project for which they ask for multiple translators but first the latter are told that they must do an unpaid test to prove their suitability for it, and the content of this test is just a part of the material that needs to be translated. The catch is that the client shamelessly issues different test content to the various translators who have declared that they are ready to do it, and the client gets it done for free in this way. The translators who agreed to do the work are cheated as the client (if they can be called that) commits an act of vorning.
* “That’s prawl to me”: say this about something that you can no longer remember having been afraid of once in your life – no more existing memories of it. Like learning how to sleep in the dark. Or maybe driving, or performing on stage.
* Trung (adjective): an adjective for a situation that you consciously and genuinely believe has a surprise in store that you otherwise simply couldn’t be prepared for.
* Chune (adjective): said of someone that you don’t really dislike, but you don’t really want to be friends with them either – they are likely awkward or frequently embarrassing in some way, and chances are that you tacitly try to avoid them.
* Glaight (adjective): an adjective attributed to a memory in your life which you are not sure whether it was real or just part of a dream.
* And finally, RAC. Short for “Relief Addiction Cure”, it’s a term of affection which it’s never OK to use flippantly. It speaks for itself, doesn’t it? There’s also TOSI / TOSP (“Tears Of Sobriety Individual / Person”).

Final note: did you know that John Milton, the guy who wrote Paradise Lost, coined 630 terms in English, according to Wikipedia?