Untranslatable Food Words
Seven writers on untranslatable food-related words and idioms from their primary languages. Illustration by Ibrahim Rayintakath.
Good morning and welcome to Vittles. Today, Marwan Kaabour, Melek Erdal, Issariya Morgan, Sumaiya Mustafa, Trà My Hickin, Barsha Mallik and Yemisí Aríbisálà introduce untranslatable words from their languages that reflect cultures of food outside the English-speaking world.
On Monday, we announced our third print issue, ‘The Influencers’, all about how the internet and short-form video have reshaped food culture. The magazine includes everything from an exhaustively reported deep dive into the economics of food influencing, to investigations into the hidden history of MFK Fisher’s role in popularising Japanese cuisine, to long reads on how Natoora came to be the dominant force shaping restaurant menus.
If you pre-order the issue before 27 July, you will receive it for a discounted price, with an extra discount for paid subscribers (see the original email for details). You can order your copy here!
Finally, although we are no longer accepting pitches for personal essays or memoir, we are extending the pitching window for reported features, investigations and long reads until this Sunday, 5 July. Further details are available here. A note: we are looking for ideas outside the usual genre of a food-story, and rather pitches have a strong sense of storyline and criticality about eating, cooking and purchasing food.
For me – like many others – English is the language of work and writing, but not the language of feeling, or life. I live in Hindustani (the Hindi–Urdu hybrid that is one of Delhi’s languages), surrounded by my family’s Tamil, and my neighbourhood’s other languages (Punjabi, Haryanvi, Nepali). When I write, I still struggle to bring the entirety of my life into the English language. No matter how hard I try, something always gets missed in translation – especially when it comes to expressions of eating and cooking. This is too much that goes on here that English simply cannot hold.
Take ‘khayali pulao’ (پلاؤ خیالی ; खयाली पुलाव्)), which translates from Urdu and Hindi as ‘pulao of the imagination’. It refers to an activity akin to daydreaming – expectations that can amount to fiction, anticipation that can have the weight of fantasy. The closest equivalent in English is perhaps ‘building castles in the sky’, but that phrase feels – to my South Asian ears at least – too judgemental or instructive. It doesn’t capture the pleasure of possibility that ‘khayali pulao’ invokes.
Every language around the world is strewn with similarly untranslatable phrases. So, we asked seven writers to write about their favourite food-related idioms in their primary languages, from Arabic to Tamil, Yoruba to Thai.
Sharanya Deepak
Arabic: زنخة (Zankha)
Closest translation: ‘The strong smell of eggs, chicken or fish left on a pan’
by Marwan Kaabour
Zankha is used to refer to a wildly unpleasant odour – discerning noses can pick it up on plates, bowls, glasses or cookware which have been used to cook eggs, chicken or fish and not properly cleaned. It’s a deep, embedded smell that tickles your nose in all the wrong ways and, once detected, is impossible to ignore. It seems like Levantine Arabs (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine) are the only people to recognise and detect zankha immediately. It’s not a subtle thing, but an olfactory slap to the nostrils: enough to turn your stomach upside down and make you gag. I personally think that eggs are the main culprit. Whenever I make them, I have to scrub and clean the plates twice – otherwise, zankha. My absolute nightmare is when someone cooks eggs and throws everything in the dishwasher without pre-cleaning or rinsing. You hear that beep signalling the end of the wash cycle, you open the dishwasher door and out comes the steam that should signal cleanliness, but instead you get smothered in zankha steam.
I have had countless conversations with Arab friends to try and find the most accurate translation: rancid, eggy, funk, stench. But none truly encapsulate zankha’s repulsive essence. I have also done numerous tests with my non-Arab friends to try and help them understand zankha. I once shoved a plate under my flatmate’s nose, encouraging her to smell it, but all I got was a confused look. Another time, I was at a restaurant with five friends, and the table itself seemed soaked in zankha. I tried to stay civil and not say anything, but alas, it got to me. I had the waiters clear the table and have it cleaned (with soap!), and only then was I able to get back to my meal. You might call me crazy, I call it zankha.
Bengali: ভাতঘুম (Bhatghum)
Closest translation: ‘A nap after eating rice’
by Barsha Mallik
Imagine a hot summer’s day, where the humidity is so heavy it lulls you into drowsiness. Add to that a plate of rice with the usual side dishes, like dal, fish curry, some sort of shak vaji or shobji vaji (sautéed greens or vegetables), and what follows is almost inevitable: a nap lasting for a few hours. In Bengal, the word used to describe this is bhatghum. It’s both an activity and a long-standing cultural practice. You could call it a siesta or a food coma, but bhatghum is far more specific. Here in Bengal, bhat (rice) is like air – you ‘inhale’ it every day – so it makes sense that there’s a word for the sleep rice summons.
This word captures the eternal nature of the Bengali people – bhat and ghum, rice and sleep. We can’t live without our rice, and we certainly don’t mind our laziness. All Bengalis have a relationship with bhatghum, whether or not they actually nap. Though bhatghum can strike at any hour, it belongs most naturally to the afternoon. When I was growing up, my grandma used to say, ‘Bhatghum ar chor akloge aye’, meaning ‘Bhatghum and thieves come in pairs’, referring to the unproven theory that afternoons here see more theft simply because everyone is lost in their rice slumber. Growing up, my father was adamant about bhatgum being a healthy practice. Every afternoon, he insisted we sleep; I rebelled, choosing my favourite TV show over his rules. But now, as an adult, my body leans toward bhatghum almost instinctively. Even on rice-less days, afternoons tug at me for a nap.
A friend of mine likes to complain that, despite our collective devotion to bhatghum, we still don’t have anything like wǔshuì in Chinese schools or the midday nap breaks of some Japanese offices. For a culture that has a name for the rice-induced nap, we are surprisingly stingy about permitting it institutionally. Sometimes I take a slow walk through sun-dappled snoozing alleys in Dhaka. A warm afternoon in a neighbourhood deep in bhatghum carries its own kind of calm.
Vietnamese: Nhậu
Closest translation: ‘Eating and drinking for no particular purpose’
by Trà My Hickin
I’ve asked many people how to translate the Vietnamese word ‘nhậu,’ and my favourite answer is ‘eating and drinking for no particular purpose’. It’s a term deeply embedded in Vietnamese culture: to nhậu you must have good company, good food and drink and a lot of time on your hands. Nhậu is not a celebration of any occasion, even the end of the week. The only reason to nhậu is because somebody has asked. This doesn’t result in a fancy meal, but one eaten (usually) on the roadside. All dishes are shared, served extra salty so they can be washed down with beer. Crucially, nhậu is the act of slowly nibbling and drinking over hours of conversation. No one is in a rush.
When I return to Vietnam, I bring with me my hasty Londoner’s mindset, trying to cram in plans with relatives and friends. Nobody listens to me, and I find myself nhậu-ing with some friends, family and occasionally a few randomers. Nhậu is both a verb and a noun, the noun enshrining that nhậu is a part of the culture. One day, I was showing friends around Hanoi when I bumped into my uncle, who was skiving off work on a random Tuesday. ‘What are you doing here at 3pm?’ I asked, and he replied ‘nhậu’, which also implied, I’m being cultured or I’m keeping up a time-honoured tradition.
Living far away from loved ones, you’d think that marking up time to visit everyone would make sense. But in Vietnam, time has its own logic; plans are unspoken and spontaneous but somehow work out in the end. Meetings blur into one another, people drift in and out, and suddenly you’ve seen everyone you meant to. Being present for these rituals of banality is how you make the most of time here. When nhậu is in session, time slows down and folds in on itself. It feels like you’ve been there forever. In these moments, time belongs to everyone again.
Tamil: கப்பல் (Kappal)
Closest translation: ‘Ship’, but used to mean ‘gluttony’
by Sumaiyya Mustafa
In Tamil, the word ‘kappal’ means ship, but in the coastal dialect that I speak, it doubles up to mean ‘gluttony’. Until the 1970s in my hometown (a southern port in Tamil Nadu called Kayalpatnam), most men, or at least one man per family, were traders who worked in other port towns, especially in Sri Lanka. To the people of Kayalpatnam, there is nothing as familiar as the largeness of a ship, and so anyone whose appetite is vast is called a kappal. I often call my six-year-old daughter ‘French fries kappal’ – a ship of French fries – because of how many she can eat in one sitting. The sea and its objects are an inseparable occurrence in the daily language of Kayalpatnam. While other Tamil communities use words like ‘sothu mootai’ (meaning ‘sack of rice’) to express gluttony, in Kayalpatnam it is kappal – the ship.
Last month, my grandmother told me about a person named Kappal, who died as an old man in the 1980s. When she mentioned his ability to eat one full sahan (a large round plate of Dutch Boerenbont that is used for communal eating in the community during wedding feasts and other family functions, and which feeds three or four people) of rice, mutton curry and dal, the character began to feel perfectly apocryphal. The day I learned of this man who earned his nickname, I was a happy person. I felt myself a participant of a culture, as a practitioner of culinary vocabularies. Besides the knowledge of methods and measurements, these lexicons carry vestiges of a community or a family’s past. Even a Tamil speaker outside of this dialect would require a good measure of guidance to understand the metaphor.
Thai: ข้าวใหม่ปลามัน (Kao mai pla maan)
Closest translation: ‘They go together like fresh rice and oily fish’
by Issariya Morgan
Food and romance are old friends. They enliven our senses, keep us lingering at the table late into the night. Speaking about romance in the language of food is as common in Thailand as anywhere else. And here, it seems, the simple things are best. Take the expression ‘kao mai pla maan’, which means ‘fresh rice and oily fish’. Describing ‘a very good thing’, this phrase is often used in the context of a new relationship – those tender beginnings when everything feels alive with possibility. Recently, at a gathering with my family in Bangkok, we read my cousin’s Tarot cards, which foretold the arrival of the Two of Cups. The image showed two lovers sharing a glass of wine. When she was asked what it meant, my aunt exclaimed, ‘Kao mai pla maan!’ Fresh rice and oily fish!
That is the spirit of the phrase – as sweet as a comforting meal, its significance instantly understood by all. But not all idioms are so straightforward. In Thailand, definitions can vary wildly depending on who you ask. Another of my favourite romantic idioms is ‘kanom jiin pasom nam ya’ – literally ‘white noodles and curry sauce’. I learned this from my mother, and understood it to mean ‘two people who are made for each other’. But when the phrase came up during the Tarot reading, it caused a cheerful commotion. Laughing, my cousin told me it meant ‘two people sneaking off to have sex’. Same same but different. I suppose that’s the joy – and trouble – of untranslatable phrases.
Turkish: Yeme de yaninda yat
Closest translation: ‘Don’t eat it, sleep next to it’
by Melek Erdal
‘Yeme de yaninda yat’ is a phrase describing a dish so good it could be promoted from something inanimate to something you’d potentially take out on a date. A meal that deserves your attention, to be listened to. A dish so beautiful it should not be disturbed with hands or mouths but rather observed and perhaps displayed in a gallery – much like Alan Titchmarsh’s red cashmere jumper, held in a glass cabinet in the Garden Museum. It is a phrase I have never heard my mother say; it is entirely my father’s way of speaking. My mother, who does the majority of the cooking in our family home, would never try to sell us a meal. The root of her cooking was, and is, duty, and a quiet joy in doing this well. For my father, the novelty of cooking made it a performance – to entertain and rally up support and joy. If for any reason he cooked, the meal would arrive at the table and be sold as the most delicious thing ever made. Here it is, come look at this – ‘yeme de yaninda yat’ – have you ever eaten anything more delicious? He would remind me of those people in Istanbul that stand outside restaurants to convince passersby to come in.
This month, I read the phrase out to my friend Zoe while on a train to Worthing to record The Kitchen Cabinet. ‘Ah, the British equivalent to this could be “snog, marry and avoid”’, she said. This got us thinking about foods we would ‘snog, marry and avoid’ if they were people. ‘I can’t think of any foods I would avoid’, I said to Zoe. ‘Start with a person you would want to avoid and think what food they would be’, she suggested. This helped. I thought about how much I dislike people who speak over me or are long-winded. This would definitely be truffle – overpowering, lingering longer than it should. Also, why is it everywhere? Who gave it the right? I would snog chicken skin and fat. Every encounter is a state of bliss, but it’s not sustainable long-term for health reasons. I would enter a polygamous marriage with a lemon, onions and pul biber – I couldn’t live without them, and we’d all actually always get on. I would have said bread, but we are in the midst of a divorce. For now, we’ve grown apart.
Yoruba: Mo jẹun, Mo yó, Mo ri mọto, Mo yà!
No translation, but the phrase says: ‘I ate, I was full to the brim, I saw a car coming and I moved out of its way!’
by Yemisí Aríbisálà
The songs I remember being chorused around the dining table and during meals in my childhood had all kinds of tropes. They were usually sung to distract the baby, to make her eat: they sometimes eulogised the matriarch who’d cooked the food, or they were a silly radio jingle for Choco Milo or Maggi cubes. The songs kept those begi-begi toddlers (begging for your chicken or fish) gainfully employed while you ate. You made them croon for morsels, promising them something at the end, then you tuned them out and ate fast. The songs had one thing in common – they were all nonsense verse, or bordering on nonsensical. They were impulsive, mad, peppered and boiled well with inebriation, the delightful, and – I warn ahead – near impossible to translate into English. The words always made us laugh, like a joke that could never lose its charm. Take this one, for example:
Mo jẹun,
Mo yó,
Mo ri mọto,
Mo yà!
It says, literally, I ate, I was full to the brim, I saw a car coming and I moved out of its way! There are many such songs (Yoruba language is made up of the tonal marks do re mi, so you are singing whether you like it or not…), and this particular one is being insidiously philosophical, too, but also doing the work of the best prayer, acknowledging those who are hungry and mad with hunger, enough to despair and stand in front of a moving car. The songs were a contrast to the stiff, uninspired ‘grace’ it seemed every single Nigerian child was taught to sing before meals in primary school. This one gives thanks for the encouragement that a good meal provides to try again, to embrace this difficult life. The song reminds us not to forget those who are hungry in a world with so much food. It does this brilliantly, while making us laugh. I have to say that we are all now too cool, too self-conscious, too urbane to sing thanksgiving for a meal.
Credits
Marwan Kaabour is an independent graphic designer, visual artist and writer from Beirut. Marwan’s debut book, The Queer Arab Glossary, was published by Saqi Books in 2024.
Melek Erdal is an Alevi Kurdish writer, cook and multidisciplinary storyteller. She was Fortnum and Mason Cookery Writer of the Year in 2024 and the Jane Grigson Trust Award recipient 2026 for her upcoming book Xwê, Salt (due to be published in 2027).
Yemisí Aríbisálà is the author of Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds (Cassava Republic Press, 2016) and In The Kitchen: Essays on Food and Life (Daunt, 2020).
Sumaiya Mustafa is a writer based in India. She writes on tastes, cultures, and films.
Issariya Morgan is a British-Thai writer who grew up in West Wales. Formerly the editor of Berry Bros & Rudd’s No.3 magazine, her background lies in wines, spirits and food. Alongside freelance writing, she maintains a ceramic art practice.
Barsha Mallik is a Bangladesh-born writer and artist based in Dhaka. She often explores heirloom recipes, culture, womanhood, healing, and the natural world through her work.
Trà My Hickin is a writer based in London and editor at Translator Magazine.
Ibrahim Rayintakath is an illustrator and art director based in his coastal hometown of Ponnani, India. His editorial work, which explores themes of culture, politics and mental health, has appeared in various outlets like the New Yorker, the New York Times and NBC.
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Zankha is amazing - adopting it!
For something truly delicious, we say in Cantonese, “eating until the ears move”! There is so much joy in the food you’re having that your ears twitch!