{"id":7825,"date":"2025-09-29T03:43:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T02:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/binarywords.com\/?p=7825"},"modified":"2025-09-29T03:43:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T02:43:15","slug":"expresiones-intraducibles-sueno-atrasado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/binarywords.com\/en\/2025\/09\/29\/expresiones-intraducibles-sueno-atrasado\/","title":{"rendered":"Untranslatable expressions: sue\u00f1o atrasado"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend we\u00b4ve taken it easy, the girls and I; I think we all needed to rest. And it did us a lot of good, though I\u00b4m not sure it was enough for the level of accumulated tiredness we all had (and it\u00b4s only been a month since school started!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo of our old sofa, which we said goodbye to a couple of months ago. I\u00b4ve enjoyed so many naps on that sofa...)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other day, just by coincidence, or I should say, thanks to Google\u00b4s algorithms, I found an article suggesting that nowadays, we live in the burnout society<\/strong>. It explained that many of us live in a situation of chronic tiredness, and the worst part is that we have normalized it. Our society values constant activity, so that\u00b4s what we do: we fill up our calendars to the brim in order to take in more, to achieve more, as a way to motivate ourselves and be happier. We don\u00b4t need anybody to exploit us; we exploit ourselves. And somehow, we perceive rest as a waste of time, something we cannot afford. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result? We are exhausted, individually and also collectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in reality, what we cannot afford is not to rest.<\/strong> And if we don\u00b4t learn this the easy way, we will learn it the hard way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u00b4s \"untranslatable expression\" is tener sue\u00f1o atrasado<\/em>, which is our way to express in Spanish that we\u00b4re sleep deprived, that we got less sleep than we should have, either during the previous night or over a longer period of time (I\u00b4ve even heard someone jokingly say they suffered lack of sleep since their first Holy Communion...)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like this way of expressing it because it conveys the idea that there\u00b4s a certain debt, a time debt in this case, that has to be \"repaid\" in order to catch up and bring things back to normal. And it\u00b4s precisely this concept of \"catching up\" that\u00b4s conveyed by the closest expression I found in English: having to catch up on sleep<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, what the experts say is that we can never make up for lost sleep<\/strong>. It\u00b4s not as easy as oversleeping one day to compensate for the day you underslept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then, what can we do? I can think of a few things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n