Translatable but Debatable – נמאס nim'as

Translatable but Debatable – נמאס nim'as

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.

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Translatable but Debatable – בסימן b'siman

Translatable but Debatable – בסימן b'siman

“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.

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Translatable but debatable – הקל hekel

Translatable but debatable – הקל hekel

The 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.

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Translatable but Debatable — מחדל mekhdal

Translatable but Debatable — מחדל mekhdal

Yeshayahu 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.

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Translatable but Debatable – התלבט hitlabet

Translatable but Debatable – התלבט hitlabet

Morfix 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.

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Translatable but Debatable – איכפתיות ichpatiut

Translatable but Debatable – איכפתיות ichpatiut

“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. 

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Translatable but Debatable — ?לא חבל Lo khaval?

Translatable but Debatable — ?לא חבל Lo khaval?

When 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.

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Translatable but Debatable – הכיל hechil

Translatable but Debatable – הכיל hechil

There 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.

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Translatable but Debatable — הגיח hegiakh

Translatable but Debatable — הגיח hegiakh

Among 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.

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Translatable but Debatable – להיטיב l'heyteev

Translatable but Debatable – להיטיב l'heyteev

For 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.

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Translatable but Debatable – רבץ ravatz

Translatable but Debatable – רבץ ravatz

If 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?”

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Translatable but Debatable – התנוסס hitnossess

Translatable but Debatable – התנוסס hitnossess

If 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. 

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Translatable but Debatable – השתלשלות hishtalshelut

Translatable but Debatable – השתלשלות hishtalshelut

From 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. 

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Translatable but Debatable – ספר עיון ויום עיון sefer iyun and yom iyun

Translatable but Debatable – ספר עיון ויום עיון sefer iyun and yom iyun

If 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

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Translatable but Debatable – תמהוני timhoni and its cognates

Translatable but Debatable – תמהוני timhoni and its cognates

Reverso.net translates “I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo” as Ani muzar, ani timhoni.  I think it drops the ball when it translates “creep” as simply “strange,” and I think a creep is a more unsympathetic kind of a weirdo than a timhoni normally is.

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Translatable but Debatable – סתם stam

Translatable but Debatable – סתם stam

Although you can read in one place that “Israelis use the word ‘stam’ at every chance they get,” elsewhere you can read that “its not a word you hear often.  I (and others) use it 99% of the time as ‘Just Kidding’, but it is slang.”

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Translatable but Debatable – התרגש hitragesh

Translatable but Debatable – התרגש hitragesh

Think about a grandmother who mitrageshet upon receiving a birthday present from her eight-year-old granddaughter.  She doesn’t feel and behave the same as an eight-year-old who mitrageshet upon receiving a birthday present from her grandmother.

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