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.
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 MoreHere’s a word that is not only difficult to translate but unpleasant to discuss and impossible to transliterate well.
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 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 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 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 MoreThe Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam says that when displayed, Anish Kapoor’s Internal Object in Three Parts “will enter a visual dialogue with Rembrandt’s late works.” I always find the one-sided claim of a dialogue irritating. I was talking with Dante the other day, and he calls it infernal.
Read MoreFor the American market, it was necessary to remove elements that were peculiar to Israel and change the names of the characters to proper American names. The USA may be a nation of immigrants, but American children want to read about other children who are like themselves, not foreigners in a foreign environment. In that way they differ from American adults who read Israeli novels in translation and tend to appreciate learning new things about the country through them.
Read MoreThe expression asa l’veito (עשה לביתו) — literally, “provided for his household” — has a respectable origin in the book of Genesis, where Jacob says to Laban: “the Lord hath blessed thee since my coming: and now when shall I provide for mine own house also?” But as Ruvik Rosenthal notes in his blog, modern Hebrew uses the expression “particularly in connection with public servants who make the move into profitable private business.
Read MoreThe holidays are almost upon us, so it’s time to look back and make an accounting. Having been asked several times, I’ve looked back over the Translatable but Debatable columns and made an index of the words they discuss.
Read MoreJust today on the evening news, Amnon Abramovich announced that regarding the latest rumors of scandal in Bibi Netanyahu’s inner circle, recent testimony had contained no ytedot, nothing to hang on to. If we use the translation of yated at Seadict.com, the testimony had no “peg, wedge, tent-peg, picket, pin, spike, stake, strut, stud, brad, chock, cotter” — all words unsuitable to carry the metaphorical meaning in English, unfortunately. Maybe the translation in this case would be “no smoking gun.”
Read MoreAlcalay and other Hebrew-to-English dictionaries are perfectly willing to allow that זכות (zchut) can mean either “right” or “privilege.” Or “prerogative.” It’s up to the context and the translator
Read MoreAlthough its meaning and its deterioration mirror the Hebrew word m’chonen, the word “seminal” has another problem, because although the Latin word semen carries the meaning of “seed” in the botanical sense, not everyone sees “seminal” that way. Ms. Brigitte, a blogger, writes: “it implies that the origin of a work is male, regardless of who wrote it.”
Read MoreWhereas Sartre was trying to distinguish an individualistic littérature engagée from already unfashionable socialist realism, in Hebrew the parallel term sifrut m’guyesset retains the association of groupthink, of being enlisted or drafted or inducted for purposes of agitprop or other propaganda rather than thoughtfully asserting beliefs one has formulated as an individual.
Read MoreLike the word “illustration” in English, hamkhashah can refer to the sort of real-life manifestation that nobody can deny, such as waving a flashlight in a darkened room to demonstrate persistence of vision, or it can refer to a way of making something clearer to the senses without proving it at all — such as a diagram, a skit, or a picture in a story book.
Read MoreSomeone driven by values would normally be called “value-driven” — with no “s” because in such a construction we normally don’t see the plural. A dog bitten by fleas is flea-bitten, a cake covered by blueberries is blueberry-covered. However, the adjective “value-driven” has been co-opted by the business world in connection with the kind of value that money buys.
Read MoreIf the translation of עמידה בלחצים is literal — resistant to pressure, indifferent to pressure, withstanding pressure, impervious to pressure — it sounds as if the worker simply keeps plodding along without taking the pressure into account, rather than coping with it as necessary.
Read MoreIt might indicate different mentalities, or it might be by chance, that in Hebrew if I harness myself — nirtam — to something, generally I’m making a noble gesture, whereas in English I’m more often assuming a regrettable burden.
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.
