The Emotional Atlas of Untranslatable Words

A data-driven exploration of language, emotion, and cultural expression. 55 words from around the world that reveal what English leaves unsaid.

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Introduction

One of the most rewarding aspects of Substack is the community it builds. Substack has been growing a lot lately, and while it’s true that some content can feel like a recycled LinkedIn feed, every now and then you stumble upon something that inspires you into making something new.

A few weeks ago, I came across a note by

Julia Diez

that did just that. 👇

Her words got me thinking, what if we could visualize the emotional nuance embedded in languages around the world, especially those words that don’t have a direct English translation?

That spark led to this post: a visual map of 55 words from across the globe that reveal how culture and language shape the way we feel. There are words like toska that express a kind of nostalgic longing, others like greng-jai that describe subtle social cues, and even others such as Ubuntu that distill an entire life philosophy into a single term.

While doing my research, I also came across another Substack author whose entire body of work is dedicated to this idea, and I felt it was worth mentioning: Words of the World. Her entire publication revolves around sharing emotional and cultural insight through these types of words, though it seems she’s currently taking a break from posting. I wish her the best on her other endeavors and hopefully, we’ll see her writing again soon.

Why This Matters?

English is a powerful language, but it doesn't capture everything. Many languages contain deeply expressive words for which we simply have no equivalent. Exploring these words is more than a linguistic exercise, it’s a way of expanding how we see the world and other cultures.

After all, Visualytics exists to spark curiosity and to invite reflection, challenge assumptions, and share new perspectives through a data-driven lens. Whether it's a chart, a map, or the application of AI, the goal is always the same: to learn something new and meaningful, together.

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Methodology

So, in true Visualytics fashion, I took the idea and ran it through a data lens.

To bring this idea to life, I curated as many unique words as possible from unique countries I could find and ended up making a set of 55 words. Additionally, I did my best to curate words that capture complex feelings, values, or cultural insights that English simply doesn’t encode with a single term.

But rather than just listing them, I wanted to explore their emotional weight. What feeling do these words carry? To answer this question, I used natural language processing and analyzed the emotional valence of each word’s definition using the bert-emotion-model, a tool trained to recognize nuanced emotional categories and that returns the following labels:

• Positive: love, happiness, surprise, desire

• Negative: sadness, anger, fear, disgust, shame, guilt, confusion, sarcasm

If you’re interested in another application of AI and NLP be sure to check out another piece I wrote a while back on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon:

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Icons - The Dark Side of the Moon

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Using these labels, I derived a positivity index, allowing each word to be scored by its emotional tone. Then, I built a choropleth map in Datawrapper, where each country is colored based on the emotion its word most strongly evokes.

In case you want to go a bit deeper, you’ll also find a full table view below, to match or explore the definitions at your own pace.

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Conclusion

At the end of the day, this post isn’t really about language, I created it with the intention to share and learn about perspective other cultures may have that we simply don’t and to attempt to illustrate how data visualization can go beyond cold, hard data in the form of summary statistics.

Each of these words reflects a way of thinking, feeling, or relating to others that might simply go unnoticed in English-speaking contexts. They show us a tiny glimpse of how other cultures may encode empathy, nostalgia, happiness, and even sadness in their everyday vocabulary. For example, there are very powerful words such as gotong-royong that foster communal spirit and cooperation, how cool would it be it the English language had something that captures the essence and the obligation each member of a community has to contributing with one another?

In visualizing them, we’re using data to listen better and to open our minds and ears to hear what the world is saying beyond our linguistic boundaries.

If even one of these words sticks with you and if it changes how you see a moment, a person, or yourself, then this map has done its job.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter though, is there a word or concept from your own language or culture that you feel everyone should know? Did you find a word that particularly resonated with you?

Share your reflections or favorite words in the comments or by restacking this post and let’s keep this conversation and curiosity going!

As always…

Thanks for reading! ✌️