Just an observation...
A while ago I was translating (Heb>Eng) a lot of material about early State of Israel politics. And guess what? Our politicians were constantly demanding things. Israel "doreshet" this and Israel "doreshet" that. Mind you, I'm not saying these demands were not justified; in my opinion they usually are. But we come across as so aggressive... especially if these drishot are translated as "demands" and "demanding". A colleague suggested using "Israel calls on the Klingon Administration to do such-and-such". Most of the time that worked pretty well. Just wanted you to know.
Aggressive? Moi?
In by Nina Rimon Davis
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4 comments:
Great solution.
To go off on a bit of a tangent re language reflecting our "national personality"..... To the best of my knowledge, there's no Hebrew word for "accountability". The few "work-arounds" that exist don't really get the point across - at least in some situations.
Nachama
Yes, this lack of accountability is a big headache, in more ways than one :-)
If anyone ever invents a word, even if it sounds good, I doubt that it'll catch on... People would first have to grasp, adopt, and really believe in the concept, for starters!
(Note that the verbs grasp, adopt, and believe are a long-winded rendering of the Hebrew verb "lehafnim"... which obviously should not be translated as "to internalize"...)
The Hebrew word "Ahrayutyut" אחריותיות is in fact used, very often with the word accountability added by way of explication (a common practice until a new word gains currency). It gets 1,650 Google hits (respectable in Hebrew terms). For a discussion on the drawbacks of this Hebrew word, see: http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=958757&contrassID=2&subContrassID=5&sbSubContrassID=0
A term that I've noticed is laden with Israeliness / the Zionist enterprise is *hityashvut yechid* התיישבות יחיד. In the rest of the world, you want to live in the country, you get some land, you farm it or not, you live there...it's called "farming" or "homesteading" if it's done with government incentives. But here communal farming is such an ingrained concept that we have to have this awkward term to describe what in the rest of the world is normal behavior, not even worth noting.
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