Untranslatable
How can shared attempts at translation support collective meaning-making?
Untranslatable is a participatory web project centered on words that have no direct translation.
Participants join the page and contribute a word that only exists in their language. They share their definition of it and record its pronunciation. Other people can respond to the word with memories, associations, interpretations, and related expressions from their own languages.
The website develops through these accumulated contributions. A single term can hold several memories, cultural references, emotional associations, and interpretations at once.
Process
The platform was built with Node.js, Express, Socket.IO, and p5.js.
