Overused words I hate: Today's Special – "you shall be exposed!"

I've already grumbled about mefanek and probably also about hazuy.

My latest pet peeve is the verb חשף, usually in binyan nif'al, i.e.

להיחשף, נחשפנו, תיחשפו

See examples below:

· בסדרה זו ניחשף לכמה מסיפורי המיתוסים השונים

· ניחשף למורכבות היחסים בין קבוצות שונות

· בכל מפגש ניחשף להרצאה הפונה אל הראש

· בקורס זה ניחשף לאינטליגנציות השונות

· בעזרת שקופיות ומוצגים שונים ניחשף לחלק מהנרטיבים המרכיבים את תרבות פקה-פקה החדשה

We are constantly being "exposed to" things. What's wrong with "we will see / learn about / experience", and so forth? That is, aside from the fact that all the above sentences employ that "friendly we" I mentioned the other day…

Many translators feel compelled to stick to the original, turning out sentences like the following:

"Essentially, one hundred thousand children and sixty thousand parents will be exposed to the computer world and will acquire the basic skills to operate the computer " etc.
(See
http://tinyurl.com/32yeqs)

I guess the expression is fine once in a while, even though I don't care for it much; my associations seem to be unpleasant, as in "exposed to the elements", but maybe that's just me being glum.

The overdoing it is what bothers me.

As for the English sentence above, I'd probably write that those parents would be introduced to the computer world.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see what you mean about "overexposure", but being exposed to something is not the same as being introduced to it.

If we're doint pet peeves, it's כ-, as in:
אני שוקל כ59 ק"ג; אני מכניסה כ 6,000 ש"ח בחודש; אני גרה כ60 ק"מ מאילת.
Why are Israelis so afraid to make a simple declarative statement? Are fact-checkers looking over our shoulders and threatening to check out the veracity of every figure we write? Even a court of law wouldn't quibble over a kilogram or a kilometer here or there. Down with כ!

Jennifer said...

I definitely second your beef Re: "exposed to"...
As a matter of fact, I just had one of those in a translation today - and probably last week and the week before that too! :-) , namely:
תוך כדי המו"מ ביחס לעסקה, נחשפתי לנכס הנוסף...
Which I simply translated as:
During the course of the negotiations blah blah, I became familiar with the other property...
I tend to just use what works best in the context and totally ignore the חשיפה word...
Jennifer Tommer

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