The Null Device blog:

Via Meg, this list of untranslatably nuance-laden words in other languages, some of which would make useful English loanwords:

plunderbund (Dutch) Alliance that exploits the public (sounds all too familiar; witness Microsoft, the copyright cartels, Bush's oilmen buddies, &c)
bricoleur (French) Construction by random messing around (actually, shouldn't that be `bricolage', with a `bricoleur' being one who participates in it?)
Ohrwurm (German) Tune that spreads through population. (Literally "earworm", I believe)
Papierkrieg (German) Deliberate complicated paperwork for a complaint
davka (Hebrew) Universe is conspiring against me
hari kuyo (Japanese) Shrine for broken sewing needles

Posted by: Eliot FmH | http://gelwan.com/followme.html | Tue Dec 18 07:13:50 2001

You are right indeed about bricolage/bricoleur. You might be able to find online the first chapter of Claude Levi Strauss' classic _The Savage Mind_ which talks about bricolage as a metaphor for the social construction of knowledge.

Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com | Tue Dec 18 07:57:01 2001

I vaguely recall someone suggesting "bricoleur" as the French translation of "hacker" (in the positive sense), though they've officially adopted something else not nearly as interesting.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Tue Dec 18 10:36:27 2001

The (official) French neologism for "hacker" is "fouineur", which translates roughly as "one who pokes one's nose into things".

http://dev.null.org/blog/archive.cgi/2001/11/03#2218_fouineur.r

Posted by: Damien | http:// | Thu Dec 20 23:21:46 2001

The verb is "bricoler", lit. "to arrange"; bricolage and bricoleur are derived forms.

Posted by: lou | http:// | Sat Dec 22 02:48:36 2001

this is an off-the-topic one, but vaguely in the same vein (with bonus corporate stupidity): pajero, a popular 4-wheel-drive with inner-city dwellers means wanker in spanish... and "bricoler" is basically "to tinker [with something]", and "un bricoleur" is a handyman, "bricolage" being what a bricoleur does :)

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