ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the untranslatability of some Tagalog lexical items and phrases. Following Catford’s classification of untranslatability, which he attributed to cultural untranslatability and linguistic untranslatability, the chapter unpacks what these meant to Tagalog untranslatables and reflected on the popular notion of untranslatability often defined as the lack of lexical equivalencies between the source language and the target language. It was observed in the chapter that cultural untranslatability occurred when there are differences in the materiality of the referent, the semantics of the word, and the lexical productivity of a concept, while structural incompatibility between the source language and the target language led to linguistic untranslatability.
