I think ‘untranslateable’ in this context is hyperbole for ‘a word so specific in its meaning it needs several words in other languages to say the same thing’.
That said, even that’s not often true of the words in these lists. That ‘commuovere’ (Italian?) over there is ‘comover’ in Portuguese and I’ll bet something similar in half a dozen Latin-derived languages.
The Portuguese ‘saudade’ that’s often mentioned, though not this particular time, is suspiciously similar to ‘longing’. And so on. Lovely illustrations anyhow.
