Loose translation

A loose translation is one that gets the meaning generally right, but is not precise.

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There are some words and concepts that don’t have direct translations between languages. One example is the word “saudade” in Portuguese. In these cases, you can’t directly translate it; you have to find a combination of words that, together, mean about the same thing. That is a “loose translation.” It’s not a perfect translation, but it tries to get the meaning basically right.

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