Israel's organization of technical/marcom writers and copy editors
Jennifer Croft, who translated Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk from Ukrainian, has announced that next time if her name won’t be on the cover, she won’t be translating. And together with novelist Mark Haddon, she started a petition. Columnist Pamela Paul believes that better visibility for translators can also lead to better pay.
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A slangy way of translating nim’as li uses“over,” as in “I’m so over this place” and “I’m over your patronizing tone, okay?” I think that’s a recent usage; I don’t remember it from when I was young. And speaking of getting old, “getting old” is another way of saying nim’as about something.
Read More“Netanyahu hasn’t learned the lesson of five months ago, that drinking up too many of his so-called natural partners’ votes can hurt him,” said a Jerusalem Post article. But there’s a better expression in English, and it’s been in use since well before this election year. “Ralph Nader was siphoning votes from Gore,” a 2004 book by William Saletan notes.
Read MoreThe dictionaries have more to say about translating hekel as applied to a problem — alleviate, mitigate, palliate, etc. — than as applied to the person who has the problem. If you find a software program complicated to use, and the company supplies shortcuts to reduce that difficulty, then actually none of the dictionary definitions of hekel can describe what the shortcuts do for you.
Read MoreYeshayahu Ben-Porat’s book about the Yom Kippur War, called HaMekhdal in Hebrew, was published in English translation under the title Kippur. English-language journalists and scholars never did come up with a thorough consensus on what to call the Mekhdal, and sometimes we see it transliterated from Hebrew and glossed in English.
Read MoreMorfix defines hitlabet as “to have doubts, to be uncertain, to weigh possibilities; to think over, to deliberate, to ponder, to mull, to debate.” Still I think of the meaning as commonly more specific than that. When I leave the house, it’s not so much that I mitlabet about whether I fed the goldfish. I mitlabet about whether or not to go back.
Read MoreThe verb — apparently starting out with the meaning of a subtle welling up from within — has taken on the popular meaning of protruding into visibility, whether slightly and gradually or boldly and suddenly.
Read More“Caring” appears a lot as a translation of ichpatiut. But “caring” doesn’t always work. You can say you want an honest, caring leader, but you can’t say you want a leader with honesty and caring. The word “caringness” suggests itself, and it does get some usage. But no traditional dictionary seems to include it.
Read MoreWhen we say “Isn’t it a shame?” the remark is commonly just an exclamation, not a question to be thought about. If the neighbor’s dog is struck by lightning, we might say “Isn’t it a shame?” but we wouldn’t say Lo khaval? The Hebrew implies that the misfortune could have been prevented, or could be prevented in the future.
Read MoreHere’s a word that is not only difficult to translate but unpleasant to discuss and impossible to transliterate well.
Read MoreThere was a movie monster called The Blob, which would nourish itself and grow by absorbing into itself whatever animal life it encountered, and I think of the mechil person as resembling The Blob but in a good way, wisely accepting events and people and growing wiser by that acceptance.
Read MoreAmong Babylon’s definitions of hegiakh is “appear suddenly,” which reminds me that more than once in my technical writing career I saw the word “appear” criticized when applied to items that pop up on the computer screen. People would complain that “appear” is a word for magicians, not for sober programmers and users. I never saw the point of the complaint.
Read MoreThe other day, I was translating some Hebrew that referred to something as “worth about as much as a garlic peel.” It’s a common expression in Hebrew, but I’ve never heard it in English. Still, I thought, it’s self-explanatory and expressions do pass from one language into another all the time.
Read MoreFor the catchphrase describing Menachem Begin’s supply-side economic policies, I find various translations on the web: to make good to the people, to benefit the people, to do well by the people, to let the people enjoy, and more.
Read MoreIf something or someone is described as being down on the ground and I see the verb lirbotz, often I think “Why didn’t the writer just say lishkav, to lie? Did he have anything special in mind, or is he simply disdaining to use everyday language and forcing me to find a pompous equivalent?”
Read MoreIf in context the verb l’hitnossess refers to something flapping or fluttering high like a flag, or hovering, so much the better for the translation, because it’s hard to translate the concept of just sitting still up there.
Read MoreMerriam-Webster takes an example of prolepsis from a poem by Alexander Pope where “yon slow oxen turn the furrowed plain.” The plain isn’t furrowed until they’ve turned it. Some organizations hold a “lessons learned” meeting at the end of a project, and if everyone had learned the lessons already, the meeting wouldn’t be necessary. So that’s prolepsis too.
Read MoreFrom the Morfix and Babylon online dictionaries, we can learn that the hishtalshelut of something is its evolution, progression, development (of a situation, event), chain of events, or sequence. Some of those terms in English are fine for a more lengthy happening, like the development of an ideology or the progression of a relationship, but I’m not sure there’s room for them in a startling incident that may have taken a couple of seconds maximum.
Read MoreIf you look up sefer iyun in Wikipedia and click for the corresponding page in English, you find that it’s “nonfiction.” But you don’t find that it’s a translation of the same article. I think every sefer iyun is nonfiction, but not every book of nonfiction is a sefer iyun.
Read MoreA machon can be a beauty shop, but it’s seldom if ever a barber shop. It can be a language school, but it’s seldom if ever a driving school. What’s the criterion?
Read MoreSite for Israel's professional tech writing and marcom community. Originally based in what has become Israel's 2nd largest R&D center (Yokneam), Elephant brings together technical and marcom writers from all over Israel. Behind the scenes and between meetings, members stay in contact with job offers and leads, joint projects, and professional assistance.
Using the wrong technical writer is like using a wrench to open a door, it works, but a door knob is better and cheaper. Elephant was started to help match writers and copy editors with companies where their skills match company needs.
