Whitman speaks of an “untranslatable self” in his poem “Song of Myself”. When he speaks of the self, he doesn’t just mean his actual body; he means the soul within him. Translators are people who move something from one language to another. Whitman is saying his soul is something that can not be translated. Before touching on why he believes his “self” is untranslatable, he discusses a few pointers about his “self. First of all, he begins the poem by saying “I celebrate myself, and sing myself”. This shows how he much he praises the “self”. Then he also speaks about the individual in his poem; he speaks of a unified democracy that’s is made up of many individuals. So while it is one voice of one nation, it is made up of different voices. Everyone’s voice is equal. Now to move on to why Whitman says the soul is untranslatable. It is something that’s cannot be put into another language; a person cannot be made into something else or mean something else like words can. If a soul has been given a meaning, that meaning will suffice forever; the person holding that soul just has to be able to live up to that meaning. So when the body dies, everything goes along with it. Not just the body parts (legs, arms, hair, etc.); but also all the memories and ideas and wonders of that “self” has ever had. All of that is terminated once the body is gone. The reason why these things are untranslated is because these things make up the person entire identity. No one else can have this same identity.