📜 The Word That Slipped Between Tongues

The word first went missing on a Tuesday. Not the dramatic kind of missing. No sirens. No frantic search parties. It simply failed to arrive where it was supposed to land, like a suitcase circling an airport carousel in a different country while its owner waits, coffee cooling, patience thinning.

I was sitting in a small translation booth at an international conference in Lisbon, glass walls smudged with fingerprints from previous interpreters, headphones resting crooked on my ears. My job was simple on paper. Listen. Understand. Convert meaning from one language into another without bruising it along the way.

Language, though, is not glassware. It is water. It changes shape. It slips through fingers. It remembers where it has been.

The speaker on stage was an elderly man from a mountain village in northern Spain. His voice was calm, almost playful, the sound of someone who trusted words the way farmers trust weather signs. He spoke about community, about shared memory, about how villages survive not by buildings but by stories passed hand to hand.

Then he said the word.

A single word that made my throat tighten.

“Duende.”

I paused. A half second too long. Long enough for the silence to bloom.

Duende is one of those words translators quietly dread. It does not behave. It refuses neat borders. In Spanish, it points to a spirit, a kind of dark creative fire, a pulse that rises from the earth and shakes the performer and the audience alike. It is not joy. It is not sadness. It is both wrestling in a narrow alley.

There is no clean English equivalent. None that tells the truth without trimming its nails.

I had a choice. I could explain it. I could replace it. Or I could risk losing it entirely.

I chose “soul.”

The conference moved on. The audience nodded. The moment passed. Applause arrived on time.

But the word did not.

It slipped. Quietly. Invisibly. Gone.

That evening, as the city warmed into twilight, I walked along the river with the uneasy feeling of someone who has forgotten something important but cannot name it. Street musicians played for loose coins and looser dreams. One man sang flamenco with his eyes closed, voice cracking like old wood under pressure.

I stopped. Something tugged at me.

His song had duende.

And I had stripped it away hours earlier, replaced it with a safer word that behaved better in English sentences.

That night, I dreamed of a suitcase spinning endlessly on a conveyor belt, labeled with my handwriting. Inside it, a word pounded from the inside like a trapped heart.

The next morning, I checked my notes. My translation still looked clean. Efficient. Professional. And deeply wrong.

Over coffee, I replayed the recording. The speaker had not been talking about soul. He had been warning about its absence. About what happens when language flattens feeling into something marketable, something export-ready.

By lunchtime, I was convinced the word was following me.

It showed up in odd places. In a museum placard mistranslated into three languages and understood by none. In a restaurant menu where “comfort food” had become “food that consoles the spirit,” an earnest phrase that somehow missed the point entirely.

Then came the email.

A woman from the audience wrote to thank the organizers. She mentioned the old man’s talk. She said it moved her deeply, though she could not explain why. She wrote, “There was something there that didn’t make it into the words. Something heavy and alive. I wish I knew what to call it.”

I stared at the screen.

That was it. The lost item had been located. Not misplaced. Miscarried.

Words do not always survive travel.

The final day of the conference included a panel discussion. Translators were allowed to ask questions. My hands shook as I raised mine.

I asked the speaker to explain duende in his own words.

He smiled. A knowing smile. The kind you give when someone finally asks the right question.

He said duende is what arrives when technique steps aside. When something raw speaks through you without asking permission. He said it cannot be summoned, only invited. He said once you name it too clearly, it leaves.

I translated slowly this time. Carefully. I did not replace the word. I carried it over intact and let it sit, untranslated, like a guest who refuses to remove their coat.

I watched the audience lean forward.

Some things, it turns out, should not be converted. They should be escorted.

After the panel, the speaker approached me. He thanked me for keeping the word alive the second time. He said translators are guardians of bridges people forget they are crossing.

That night, I packed my suitcase. I checked the pockets twice.

On the flight home, I thought about all the things that get lost in translation that have nothing to do with language. Apologies that arrive too late. Love that changes shape when spoken aloud. Jokes that fall flat in unfamiliar ears. Grief that has no name in a new country.

We are always translating ourselves. From thought to speech. From feeling to gesture. From intention to impact.

Most days, something small goes missing.

But sometimes, if you listen closely, you can hear it tapping from the inside of the luggage, reminding you that meaning is not fragile. It is stubborn. It wants to be carried with care.

When I landed, the carousel began its slow rotation. Bags appeared one by one.

Mine arrived.

Nothing lost.

Except the illusion that words are ever fully under our control.

And maybe that is where the real meaning lives. In the space between what is said and what is felt. In the pause where a word hesitates, deciding whether to stay or wander.

That is where duende waits.

Quiet.

Patient.

Untranslatable.