Untranslatable, Allegedly

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NEXT.md — current state and queue

Rewritten 2026-09-08 by the close-out session (interactive, owner-directed). No next session is scheduled: the owner switched off the scheduled routine on 2026-09-08 and wound the project up. Anyone resuming should read resume-prompt.md first, then this file; the open leads below are preserved exactly as session 61 left them.

State

Project closed 2026-09-08 after 61 scheduled sessions (2026-08-28 → 2026-09-08). Final holdings: 25 word case studies, 5 concept pages, 1 topic page, 240 source records, 61 journal entries; US$0.00 spent. The close-out session fixed 12 reciprocal cross-link gaps, normalized four drifted word-count phrasings, added wiki/close-out.md, and published a plain-language essay plus an HTML mirror of this whole directory to the repository-root docs/ folder (GitHub Pages). No word-page finding was changed at close-out; one stale count on a source record was corrected by a dated note (see the log entry). Detail: wiki/log.md close-out entry; journal/2026-09-08-d.md.

python3 tools/check_links.py (run from project-2/): clean.

Open leads at close-out (preserved, not scheduled — formerly the queue)

Item 10 (the general contradiction/staleness sweep) was only partly done at close-out (reciprocal links and numerals fixed; the full read-through was not performed).

  1. Iktsuarpok's highest-value open lead, unchanged, still unclosed: two digitizations of Thibert's dictionary are confirmed to exist and both are confirmed blocked (HathiTrust: search-only, no snippet; Internet Archive: Controlled Digital Lending). Take only with a genuinely new access route not yet tried: a legitimate interlibrary-loan request, a library holding a public-access/full-view copy, or (if this project's tools ever gain the means) completing an Internet Archive borrow session. Do not re-attempt the same two blocked copies by the same methods.
  2. Iktsuarpok's remaining open leads, now very narrow: (b) an Inuktitut-language usage instance — Nunavut's Hansard has no search tool of its own; a future session could try opening individual recent Inuktitut-language Hansard PDFs directly, or search for a third-party full-text index of them, rather than relying on Google indexing the syllabics (tried session 58, no hit). (c) Cassin's dictionary — narrowed to likely-absent by publisher/catalog scope pages; only a direct index read (blocked, see Fences) would fully close it. (f) — no literary translator-practice data point found (Patsauq, Ipellie checked, no connection found; a different Inuit-authored or Inuktitut-translated text could still be tried). The Asuilaak Living Dictionary and Uqailaut morphological analyzer are now both settled fences (see Fences) — do not resume either without a genuinely new access route.
  3. Abhiman's remaining open leads (very narrow): (c) Praharaj's grammatical-tag key — three of the most likely candidate documents now ruled out (abbreviations.pdf, praharaj.pdf, frontmatter1.pdf); six further per-volume front-matter PDFs (frontmatter2.pdf–frontmatter7.pdf) remain untried but are now judged low-yield — take only if a future session has a genuinely new pointer to where the key lives; (d) the Krishna Singha Mahabharata quotation uncross-checked — no English translation of this specific rendering found; a specialized Odia-literature source, not general web search, is probably needed.
  4. Oodal's remaining open leads (narrowed again this session): (a) the classical citations (Tolkāppiyam 14, Iṟaiyaṉār Akapporuḷ, Nampi Akapporuḷ 25) were read only at one remove via Zvelebil's and the Tamil Lexicon's quotation of them — a direct primary edition would strengthen this; (b) OED — now exhausted-methods, not just open: five distinct methods tried across two sessions (see State above and sources/oed-com-oodal-search-attempts.md) all blocked or inconclusive; take only with a genuinely new tool or access route, not a sixth repeat of any tried method; (c) Cassin's dictionary coverage narrowed toward likely-absent (via source reuse, an inference not an index check) — a direct index read remains blocked (Internet Archive CDL restriction); (d) the word's presence in contemporary Tamil cinema/song — a thin first pass found only social-media hits and one unreachable (HTTP 502) new dictionary lead, dt.madurai.io, worth retrying; (e) a dedicated read of a full published Sangam-anthology translation (e.g. Ramanujan's The Interior Landscape, or George Hart) for further marutam-tiṇai/ūṭal poems, beyond the two Zvelebil happens to quote.
  5. A twenty-sixth word case study. Language spread is now Portuguese, Danish, Japanese (×2), German, Swedish, Dutch, Greek, Zulu/Xhosa (Nguni Bantu), Wolof (Senegambian), Akan (Kwa), Hindi/Urdu and Odia (Indo-Aryan, ×2), Czech and Russian (Slavic, ×2), Turkish (Turkic), Finnish (Uralic), Mandarin Chinese (Sinitic), Levantine Arabic and Amharic (Semitic, ×2), Tagalog and Malay/Indonesian (Austronesian, ×2), Yaghan (isolate), Inuktitut (Eskimo-Aleut), and Tamil (Dravidian, new this session). Still genuinely untried: a genuinely new Sinitic/Sino-Tibetan word beyond Mandarin mianzi; a second Niger-Congo case from a different branch again (Igbo chi/obi surfaced session 46 as real academic/literary concepts but with no popular-genre listicle source found). A candidate surfaced session 57, not yet pursued: viraha (Sanskrit, longing/separation), named alongside abhiman in The Marginalian's 2026 listicle and Watt Smith's book — untouched by this project, would need its own independent research before being treated as a case study.
  6. Mamihlapinatapai's own most valuable open leads (unchanged): (a) the flagged, explicitly-unverified "communal fireside-storytelling" gloss reportedly in a 2018 BBC Travel article — bbc.com is a standing blocked host, r.jina.ai does not bypass it; (b) OED and Oxford Learner's not attempted; (c) whether Cassin's dictionary covers the word, unchecked; (d) the 1865/1879 Bridges manuscript quotations not independently confirmed against a primary manuscript scan; (e) the InTranslation/Brooklyn Rail essay's own author byline not resolved; (f) whether Bridges' or Gusinde's own ethnographic transcriptions contain any translated instance of the word or its root, not attempted.
  7. Tizita's open leads: two scholarly musicological sources (Weisser & Falceto 2013, Timkehet Teffera 2013) available only via academia.edu (standing fence) — try an open-access mirror; also (a) verify Wikipedia's unsourced Amharic/Tigrinya-only claim against a primary Ge'ez/comparative-Ethiosemitic source; (b) a literary translator-practice data point (Sahle Sellassie, Hama Tuma), not attempted; (c) Cassin's dictionary, unchecked; (d) Collins, Dictionary.com, Cambridge, Oxford Learner's, OED not attempted.
  8. Gemas's own open leads: (a) a literary translator-practice data point (Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Eka Kurniawan, Ayu Utami), not yet attempted; (b) Thai man khiaao and Chamorro ma'goddai remain wholly unverified against any primary lexicographic source; (c) a Malaysian-standard primary dictionary (Kamus Dewan) for geram specifically; (d) whether Cassin's dictionary covers either word, unchecked; (e) a direct 404 confirmation of Merriam-Webster's absence, not yet done.
  9. Sankofa's own open leads: (a) a literary translator-practice data point (Ayi Kwei Armah, Kojo Laing), not attempted; (b) the san/kɔ/fa three-morpheme breakdown rests on tertiary sources only; (c) whether Cassin's dictionary covers the word, unchecked; (d) OED, Collins, Cambridge, and Oxford Learner's not attempted; (e) the 1993 Haile Gerima film Sankofa and the word's broader African-American cultural history not independently researched.
  10. A general contradiction/staleness sweep (split out from the reciprocal-cross-link lint pass, session 43; due roughly every five sessions per framework.md §6, now well overdue at 25 word pages). Read all twenty-five word pages against each other for contradictions or dated claims a mechanical link checker can't see. While at it, spot-check "See also" catch-all bullets' word-count phrasing for drift.
  11. Teranga's own most valuable open lead (from session 41, unchanged): Emily Riley's 2016 Michigan State University dissertation and her related 2019 PoLAR journal article — both proved unreachable. Try the r.jina.ai-proxy method on the MSU repository and anthrosource URLs specifically — untried against either yet.
  12. Teranga's other open leads (from session 41, unchanged): (a) a primary Wolof-language lexicographic source; (b) tracing the Senghor/négritude quotations to a primary Senghor text; (c) the contemporary Senegalese public debate over teranga and migration/hospitality policy; (d) a literary translator-practice data point (Senghor's own poetry, or Bâ, Sembène, Boubacar Boris Diop, Diome); (e) confirming when/by whom the "Lions of Teranga" nickname was coined; (f) Oxford Learner's and the OED, not attempted.
  13. Toska's own most valuable open leads (from session 40, unchanged): (a) a direct, primary side-by-side check of how toska is rendered across the parallel English/Russian texts of Nabokov's own Lolita; (b) a primary Russian-language lexicographic source; (c) Anna Wierzbicka's 1990 paper specifically on toska; (d) whether East/South Slavic cognates of *tъska show the same sense-divergence documented for litost's Polish cognate; (e) whether Cassin's dictionary covers toska; (f) Collins, Cambridge, Oxford Learner's — all blocked 403 (try the search-endpoint route that worked for Cambridge/abhiman/iktsuarpok); (g) Dostoevsky's fiction as a further literary-translator-practice data point.
  14. Ya'aburnee's own most valuable open lead: a primary Arabic-language lexicographic source — Almaany (403) and Hans Wehr via ejtaal.net (JS-rendered) both failed; try curl with a browser User-Agent on Almaany, or search for an alternative Hans Wehr mirror/PDF.
  15. Mianzi's own most valuable open lead: a primary Chinese lexicographic source (e.g. Xiandai Hanyu Cidian).
  16. Sisu's own most valuable open lead: a legitimately obtained direct check of Väinö Linna's Tuntematon sotilas (tr. Liesl Yamaguchi, 2015). Also: the official Finnish dictionary (Kotus's Kielitoimiston sanakirja), JS-rendered and previously unreachable — try the r.jina.ai-proxy method.
  17. Hüzün's own most valuable open lead: a legitimately obtained direct reading of Maureen Freely's translation of the hüzün passage in Istanbul: Memories and the City (2005).
  18. Litost's own most valuable open lead: a legitimately obtained side-by-side comparison of Heim's 1980 and Asher's 1996 translations of the litost-definition passage.
  19. Older per-word gaps (jugaad, ubuntu, meraki, gezellig, lagom, schadenfreude, wabi-sabi): see prior sessions' notes in wiki/log.md; unchanged.
  20. Long-stuck individual leads, each take only on a genuinely new method/angle: the Goodreads review sign-in wall (try r.jina.ai); the Rosten 1968 Joys of Yiddish paywall; confirming the Pessoa/Costa saudade data point; komorebi-in-Japanese-marketing; a copy of Wild Swims (Graywolf, 2021); a second word-level von Flotow taxonomy attempt for saudade; theculturetrip.com's "11 Untranslatable Nigerian Slang Words" article; Bilita mpash (a Bantu "blissful dream" word, unresearched, a possible future case-study candidate).

Fences (do not re-grind)

For the owner