"The time has come," the Walrus said...

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things."
Or, in my case: the time has come, my colleagues said, to stop ranting and go back to giving my fellow-translators some good, solid, specific tips.
Well, I don't plan to stop ranting altogether… Criticizing can be fun. Besides, I enjoy getting things off my chest and out of my system. But this blog aims to be useful.

So here's a quick recap of some annoying / awkward words and phrases that occur often in Hebrew texts, causing us all headaches. I don't have a solution to all; by all means, feel free to add your own solutions and suggestions.

Incidentally, there's plenty more where these came from... I kept it to a minimum this time because handling tables in html so that they come out looking decent on these pages is a huge pain in the neck. If you have any tips -- please send them my way!

Hebrew	English
אפשר, ניתן	"you can" usually works fine; better than "it is possible".
במסגרת	As part of… within… or just omit and reword sentence. Try to avoid "in the framework of…"
אחמ"ש	Shift Supervisor.
פריפריה	Though you'll see "Israel's periphery" in newspapers, I don't think it's right. I usually use "outlying regions" or something to that effect.
הטבה, הטבות	Does not always mean "benefits". It is used loosely in Hebrew in different contexts and often means a discount, special price, reduced rate.
לרכז, ריכוז	To coordinate the efforts on… to keep a list of, be responsible for, be in charge of, handle, coordinate.
לתת מענה	provide a solution, respond to, react to, deal with, come up with a plan
מעוצב	Stylish, stylized, uniquely designed, individually designed; and sometimes: hand crafted, hand decorated. (Mostly it just means that someone actually put some thought into how it should look…)