Language from culture

Carol and I read a children's book about a group of Brazilian characters doing Brazilian things. It was a well-written book, whimsical with a good plot and great character development. I found an English-language version of the book online and it was about a third as long as the Brazilian version. I ordered it to find out why. The English version retained the things an English speaking kid would understand like the forsaken rabbit, the luxury dog and the bear that escaped from the zoo. But those things that only a Brazilian kid would understand, the vira lata, the instruments of samba and the carnival blocos, were gone like they never were. It was as if the soul was missing from the book. To me, this illustrates the separation of language from culture. Language can be translated but even with professional translators and resources, culture cannot. Although we are working on it, we still translate this Brazilian life with our English minds and, as such, we miss out on a lot of the content and most of the soul.