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.
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: מהלך (mahalach)
/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.
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: 'אנף, מחלקה וכד (departments, divisions, etc.)
/Iâve decided, for example, that anafim are divisions only to find myself facing a problem later: if anaf is a division, whatâs agaf? Whatâs mador?Â
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: להפעיל (lhaf'il)
/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.
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: מסגרת (misgerret)
/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.
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: זיקה (zika)
/“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...
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: שלום רב ("shalom rav")
/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.
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: דווקא (davka)
/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?”
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: פניות (pniyot)
/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.
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: תקן (teken)
/The Academy of the Hebrew Language lists sixty phrases including the word תקן, and in more than fifty of them the translation uses
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: גיבוש, לגבש (gibush, l'gabesh)
/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!”
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: מול (mool)
/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.
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: מערך (maarach)
/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.
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: גורם (gorem)
/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.
Read MoreTranslatable but Debatable: ביצוע, לבצע (bitsua, l'vatsea)
/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.
Read More
