Posts matching to Hebrew translation issues
Translatable But Debatable - L'histayeg
The ambiguity of הסתייגויות and its common translation “reservations” had its finest hour, I guess, when Ariel Sharon accepted the American road map for the Middle East with fourteen reservations. That’s not an acceptance, Arab figures are complaining to this day. Yes it is, Israel says, it just includes reservations. The ambiguity of “reservations” even allowed Mahmoud Abbas, while complaining about Israel’s response to the road map, to assert, “we accepted it, despite our own comments and reservations.”
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Translatable But Debatable - L'hishtolel
Calvin explains that the use of eshtolel’lu, instead of hishtol’lu, is a Chaldean touch, and that since the verb is reflexive, that is to say “acting on one’s self, it has been here rendered by some, despoiled themselves of mind, were mad, furious.” We are portraying the situation similarly when today we say in slang that someone “lost it.”
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Translatable but Debatable - Tkinut
The Hebrew said that the mission wasn’t accomplished till the תקינות of the newly developed interfaces was tested. I didn’t have a word for תקינות. I suppose it might have sufficed to say “till the interfaces are tested,” jumping straight past the word.
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Translatable but Debatable - Keruv
The word closen means not only “to become close or more close (‘the closening bonds between two countries’) but also “to make close.” It could work as long as you avoid ambiguity and, as the British say, don’t frighten the horses.
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Translatable But Debatable - L'havdil
I don’t find many dictionary definitions of להבדיל. Dov Ben Abba’s dictionary in Signet paperback says “not to be mentioned together,” which makes sense — or at least reasonable partial sense, since whenever we say להבדיל we are indeed mentioning things together, while simultaneously we point out that they are not to be compared except in the narrow sense that we intend.
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Translatable but Debatable - פירגון (Firgun)
A contributor to “Better than English” writes that פירגון is “An act of saying nice things or doing nice things to another person without any other purpose, but to make the other feel good about what he is or what he does” but another contributor responds that “It can also be to share the credit with someone or not try to stab them in the back. Not to be jealous of someone’s accomplishments.”
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Translatable But Debatable - געגועים
Nostalgia may be wistfully reflective but is not painfully sad the way געגועים can be. Are we ever said to be nostalgic over people anyway? Times and places for sure, but individual people? I don’t know. Maybe public figures.
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Translatable But Debatable - Some Hebrew Postnominals
How can we render ז"ל into English? English does provide us with an abbreviation, RIP, and I would feel free to use it in a translation, but only in a translation that does not have to read smoothly in English. In English, the abbreviation RIP is not a common expression to see in running text, and in our day it verges on facetious.
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Translatable but Debatable - קול קורא
When a person or a movement presents its principles and encourages the government in particular and the nation in general to recognize their validity, what it has written is a manifesto. Unfortunately, readers of English are strongly accustomed to seeing the word manifesto preceded by Communist. And if it isn’t Communist, it’s Unabomber.
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Translatable But Debatable - Zimun
The word הזמנה is the one that corresponds better to invitation. It’s a notice saying that you will be welcome at the specified place at the specified time, but unlike זימון it implies you are free to never show up. A זימון may be open to negotiation, but it does not want, and it does not expect, to be disregarded.
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Translatable But Debatable - Too Hebrew, or English enough
There was a spate of commentary explaining that terrorism is a nuisance but not an existential threat to Israel. Before that, I’d heard only about existentialism. So an existential threat to Israel sounded like a streetful of French intellectuals campaigning to cut off our supply of brie.
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Translatable But Debatable - Minimizing Exposure
Both חשיפה and exposure are odd concepts in that they are not necessarily affected much by a reversal of directionality. For example, if a rabbi exposes his sense of humor to his students, he has also exposed his students to his sense of humor and the phrasings differ little in their meaning. I suppose the difference is in a choice of emphasis: on the thing that has previously remained in concealment, or on the people who have previously remained unaware.
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Translatable But Debatable - Tofa'ah
In English, the word phenomenon is claimed both by scientists who consider that, as in Greek, it means anything that has come into view, and by circus ringmasters who like to reserve it for things they would call phenomenal, while the rest of us are caught in between. Nachama Kanner wrote in asking about those cases where phenomenon doesn’t quite work as a translation for תופעה.
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Translatable But Debatable - Livui ליווי
What is the general term that would fit a guy whose function involves no hands-on participation, no hiring, firing, budget-making, imposition of schedules, or issuance of commands, and no PowerPoint presentations, but who nonetheless is supposed to be listened to seriously because he knows the stuff?
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Translatable But Debatable – פינוק
“I decided to pamper Yuval”? In English it sounds like a bad decision, and it sounds like adopting a practice rather than performing a single action. Maybe a variation would work — “I decided to pamper Yuval a little.”
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Translatable but Debatable: The Human Resources Manager and Others
With the compact abbreviation CEO for מנכ"ל, at first glance the compact abbreviation VP fits nicely for סמנכ"ל. But can you be a vice president seated next to a CEO rather than next to a president? Is it like being Sherlock Holmes and Sancho Panza?
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Translatable but Debatable - Klita at the workplace
Businesses perform קליטה all the time, as they bring in new employees, so some businesses adopt the word absorption and it’s got to rub an English-speaking recruit the wrong way. We don’t so much mind being absorbed into the noble Jewish state, but to think of your identity dissolving around the edges as you become part of, say, Srigamish? — It may be a fine company but the concept is disturbing.
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Translatable But Debatable - המון and הרבה
Since “hamon” is generally considered greater than “harbeh,” either there more oodles in “hamon” than in “harbeh” or each oodle is larger.
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Translatable But Debatable - מהלך
If the candy bar I paid for has fallen only halfway down the chute of the vending machine, and I bang the machine, that’s a mahalakh. When I eat the candy bar, that’s not a mahalakh. Not every action is.
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Translatable But Debatable - 'ענף, מחלקה וכד
I’ve decided, for example, that anafim are divisions only to find myself facing a problem later: if anaf is a division, what’s agaf? What’s mador?
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Translatable but Debatable - להפעיל
What about the person whose task involves the הפעלה of other people? You can run a department, but you can’t run a person, or someone else’s department, although in the spy movies you can run a secret agent in someone else’s country.
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Translatable But Debatable - מסגרת
In Hebrew, במסגרת functions rather like an everyday preposition that has nothing to do with a picture frame, a rim, or a visible border of any kind, whereas in English the word framework, being less common, does summon the image of a physical structure and the metaphor becomes irritating with repetition.
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Translatable but Debatable - זיקה
“Meteors frequently fall to this earth during earthquakes,” remarked Charles Fort the great compiler of oddities, “but that may be only by coincidence, just as offsprings so often appear after marriage...”
Hebrew provides a wondrously noncommittal word, זיקה, that Fort might have liked...
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Hebrew provides a wondrously noncommittal word, זיקה, that Fort might have liked...
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Translatable But Debatable - שלום רב and המון
Like the quality of mercy, the quantity of hello isn’t strained. That is, nobody forced the writer to choose the more formal, more expansive “shalom rav” rather than the everyday “shalom” so presumably there is an intentional difference worth translating.
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Translatable but Debatable - דווקא
The word דווקא is post-Biblical, from the Aramaic. If it were a Biblical word, it would be on every page of the Bible and King James would have been forced to deal with it. “Hast thou davka eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?”
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Translatable but Debatable - פניות
Twenty years ago, calls and letters might have sufficed for פניות, but today the list of media may be longer. The term communications could be useful, but it is a little heavy and vague. A lot could be covered by feedback, but it doesn’t exactly apply, for example, to the fellow who writes in not to comment or inquire about your activities but to offer his services as a feng shui consultant.
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Translatable But Debatable - Teken
The Academy of the Hebrew Language lists sixty phrases including the word תקן, and in more than fifty of them the translation uses "standard." But reader Jonathan Danilowitz points out that there is “trouble when it refers to the number of employees for a certain task — ‘standard’ doesn't work— or for the time allowed for something, or quantities for various purposes.”
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Translatable but Debatable: גיבוש, לגבש
At the convention, when someone at the microphone remarked on the overuse of "crystallize" as a translation for gibush, a British-accented shout came from somewhere in the audience, “Formulate!”
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Translatable but Debatable: מול
I think that vis-à-vis often expresses מול better than any alternative would. Unfortunately, vis-à-vis is not an expression that endures repetition well. You can write מול five or six times on a page, but vis-à-vis that many times would look peculiar.
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Translatable but Debatable מערך
A conscientious company had appointed a safety warden for each department, it considered them collectively a מערך in Hebrew, and it needed a translation. The dictionaries offer “disposition” and “formation,” but those words lean too much toward the positioning and not enough toward the people and their mission.
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Translatable but Debatable גורם
I was in the office of a hi-tech CEO some time ago when a phone call came in from a vendor of translation software. The CEO listened only a few seconds before interrupting the vendor: “How does it translate הגורם המבצע?” he asked. I was impressed that he had such a challenge at the ready.
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Translatable but Debatable ביצוע, לבצע
As the champion high-jumper clears the bar, the sportscaster cries out: איזה ביצוע! — which is to say, what a thing-doing. The English language has some theoretically fine translations for ביצוע, but connotations are a problem. You could say what an accomplishment, but that would express the connotation that he did something difficult, not that he did it well or elegantly.
This series of columns will be presenting one hard-to-translate Hebrew word at a time for discussion, and we’ll start with ביצוע (or לבצע).
You’re encouraged to add your comments at the end of the column, but please stick to the word currently under discussion. One word will likely remind you of another, but if you’d like to discuss another word, please write to me at Elephant — whystyle@elephant.org.il — and I’ll present it with due credit in a future column. That way, we can not only conduct a nicely focused discussion but also leave behind a useful archive for future reference, one word at a time.
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This series of columns will be presenting one hard-to-translate Hebrew word at a time for discussion, and we’ll start with ביצוע (or לבצע).
You’re encouraged to add your comments at the end of the column, but please stick to the word currently under discussion. One word will likely remind you of another, but if you’d like to discuss another word, please write to me at Elephant — whystyle@elephant.org.il — and I’ll present it with due credit in a future column. That way, we can not only conduct a nicely focused discussion but also leave behind a useful archive for future reference, one word at a time.
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