Sep 1st, 2006 | Court Interpretation, Essays, Hebrew, Interpretation, Translation | No Comments
By Jonathan Goldberg
Given the choice of offering a literal, by-the-book interpretation that you are certain the recipient won’t understand and offering a less-than-exact equivalent of the original that you are confident he will understand, what would you do? It’s tempting to speculate that most of us would opt for the latter. But are there consequences to doing this? Especially when the setting is a legal one? Jonathan Goldberg dives in.
The verb “to interpret” has two common meanings, which in a sense are somewhat contradictory. The first relates to the act of interpreting written documents or oral statements, in the sense of giving one’s “take” on them. The use of the word in this sense suggests circumstances in which a fair degree of subjectivity is permitted.
The second sense, with which NCTA members are likely to make an association, relates to the art of oral translation, whose practitioners are expected to eschew subjectivity and to render the target language with an almost scientific precision.
Translations are often chiseled out of rough source language and fashioned in their final form with the aid of dictionaries, by consulting colleagues and, as a last resort, by asking the client for a clarification of the intended meaning. Interpretion assignments, such as the cross-examination of witnesses, allow no such luxury. Rather, the thrust and parry of these verbal brawls sometimes makes one yearn for the days when one knew only a single language and life seemed simpler on that account.
While driving back from one such assignment, a Hebrew-language deposition, I was mulling over one or two of the trickier terms that the deposing attorney had been pitching across the table at his victim. The deponent for whom I had been interpreting was a flower seller. The deposing lawyer, confident that he was about to establish a case of forgery, dramatically flourished the document he held and asked the deponent: “So does this purport to be your signature?” As the word “purport” comes up fairly often in legal settings (and being myself a retired lawyer), I knew the Hebrew equivalent. But I anticipated a familiar trap.
While I had no doubt that the flower vendor could, if called upon to do so, expound at length on the subtle differences between various types of chrysanthemums, I was equally confident that he had never heard the Hebrew equivalent of “purport.” If, therefore, I rendered a translation of that word so precise as to qualify me for a top grade in any Hebrew-language test, I knew that the deponent was highly likely to reply “I didn’t understand the question.”
This kind of situation is pregnant with danger for the interpreter. At best, furtive glances are likely to be thrown in the interpreter’s direction, with all present assuming that the correct rendition of the lawyer’s question had proven beyond the interpreter’s language skills. At worst, the deponent’s counsel, looking up from his newspaper, is likely to see in the deponent’s state of bamboozlement a golden opportunity to come to his client’s defense (which he may well not have done in any juridical sense), by stating for the record “We seem to be having a problem with the interpreter,” or some such gratuitous comment.
Determined not to become a victim of the blame game, I decided, on the spur of that fateful moment, to break all the rules of professional interpreting, and to take a little professional license, by lowering the register of the question. I therefore rendered, in Hebrew, the equivalent of “So are you claiming that this is your signature?” I held my breath as I waited to see whether my self-protective, unprofessional sleight-of-tongue would have the desired effect. Would it, I wondered, elicit an answer that would demonstrate that the deponent had understood the question and if he had not, would it be he or I who would take the rap? His reply, in Hebrew, was: “Not only do I claim that this is my signature, but it is in fact my signature.” I took one more small step, if not for humanity, then at least for the interpreting profession, and rendered the answer back into English as “Not only does it purport to be my signature, but it is in fact my signature.”
My gamble had paid off. The pair of distortions had cancelled each other out. I had demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that the deponent’s powers of comprehension extended far beyond the realm of chrysanthemums. I had allowed the deponent’s counsel to continue reading his newspaper without the need to sort out any bothersome misunderstandings. I had in fact performed a valuable service to all parties.
I am hoping that the parties who paid me to interpret for the flower vendor are not regular readers of Translorial, because they may not fully appreciate the interpreting resourcefulness that I displayed while on contract to them. But if this frank discovery of mine (in the legal sense of that word) should elicit a complaint, or a demand to stick to the straight and narrow
path of interpreting when carrying out future assignments, I intend to plead argumentum ab inconvenienti.
Feb 1st, 2006 | Essays, Hebrew, Literary Translation, Translation | No Comments
New lessons in literature
By Merav Rozenblum
The Hebrew-language book market may be small in Israel, but it is extremely passionate. Consider that among a population of some seven million people, only about 100,000—after subtracting Arabic and Russian speakers, children, ultra orthodox Jews, and others who simply don’t read—are potential book buyers. Still, these are avid readers who need translators to quench their literary thirst.
In a country where half of all books published are translations, a typical publication run numbers about 1,500. Selling 4,000 copies of a book makes it a bestseller. Into this rather concentrated market, put a translator with the ability to work from an exotic language such as Japanese or Portuguese, or with the opportunity to translate an important novel such as the Harry Potter series or Life of Pi (by NCTA’s own Ofer Shorr), and the result is an environment in which Hebrew translators may receive recognition (if not some modest monetary rewards) that is virtually unheard of here in the States. This is especially true with regard to the current trend of re-translating much of the classic literature of the 20th century.
New perspectives
Why the re-translations? Efrat Lev, a Foreign Rights Director with The Deborah Harris Literary Agency in Jerusalem, explains that some world classics are taught in schools and there’s a real need to update the language. Modern Hebrew, after all—now about 140 years old—has developed rapidly in the past 40 years, and a 17-year-old girl today will not be attracted to a 1958 Hebrew translation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. (The new translation of this Russian masterpiece became a bestseller within weeks of its publication.)
Several high-profile books have been retranslated recently in Israel, among them Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens. This book was re-translated by a well-known journalist, Irit Linor, an author in her own right, and a TV and radio personality well known for her acerbic wit. Whether it was because of her celebrity status that her name is featured prominently on the cover is open to speculation (Ms. Lev thinks it is something of a PR stunt), but the fact remains that that the translator has assumed a new prominence in this evolving author-translator-publisher relationship.
Language to the fore
In addition to Nicholas Nickleby, A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh has also seen a recent re-translation (supporters of the new translation say children can understand it more easily; opponents argue the language has been dumbed down), and other classics are also receiving fresh interpretations. Gili Bar-Hillel, who gained her reputation primarily as the translator of the Harry Potter series, is working these days on a new translation of The Wizard of Oz, of which she is a long-time fan.
For Huckleberry Finn, Yaniv Farkash deliberately did not use previous translations as a reference. “The point of departure was just so different,” said Mr. Farkash. “The previous translations focused on the story; in one of them, the translator, a famous author of children’s books, even decided to omit the murder scene, thinking it wasn’t appropriate for children. I wanted to convey the text as in the original language, with all its linguistic richness.”
Most of the translators of the great Western masterpieces first published in modern Hebrew in the 50s, 60s, and 70s were poets and writers, who felt it was their duty to teach the new language to readers through their work. These translations are therefore highly poetic, using a register that might sound stilted and unnatural to many of today’s native speakers.
Mr. Farkash is very much aware of his advantage as a young native-Hebrew speaker living in 21st century Israel. It has been only in the last couple of decades that the use of slang, as well as informal and colloquial language, has been legitimized in original Hebrew literature, and even more so in local Hebrew newspapers and media.
As if to underscore this point, one of last fall’s bestsellers in Israel was a 10,000-word dictionary of Israeli slang, which not only reflects the influx of foreign words into modern Hebrew, but also illustrates the ancient language’s challenge in adapting to modern times.
New words, new ideas
The Academy for the Hebrew Language (the Israeli equivalent of the Académie Française), which generally tries to inhibit the importation and use of foreign words, often tries to invent Hebrew alternatives to these imports. In this forum, the nation’s most respected linguists offer their creations, which are then debated (often vigorously) and voted upon. A list of new words is published several times a year, and while state radio and TV are asked to use them, the requests are not binding—and often not heeded.
“Every word has its fate,” explained Avraham Tal, deputy director of the Academy, admitting that the Academy does not have a stellar record of getting its creations into the modern vernacular.
The greatest challenge in the new translation of Huckleberry Finn was in fact the treatment of language. Mr. Farkash worked closely with his editor, a privilege that only translators working with the more serious publishing houses get. They wanted the Hebrew text to be fluid, dynamic, and fun, just like the original English. Mr. Farkash used his intuition and tried to differentiate between the various voices that Twain employs. The glowing reviews that the book received attest to his success.
Literary translator as celebrity? Welcome to Israel, where this idea is not necessarily a contradiction in terms
Note: Some material sourced from the article “Hebrew Slang Pushes Aside Older Words,” by Karin Laub, Associated Press.
Feb 1st, 2004 | Essays, Hebrew, NCTA Members, Spanish | No Comments
BY MERAV ROZENBLUM
When we started thinking of our wedding ceremony and asked ourselves what, how, where and who we would like to have in it, the issue of language immediately came up. I grew up in Israel, and although both my parents emigrated there from Argentina just a few years before I was born, Hebrew was my first language. I acquired most of the Spanish that I now speak as an adult in school. Francisco, now my husband, grew up in a Spanish-speaking home here in the US and is a perfect bilingual.
So there was no doubt Spanish was to be one of the languages of the ceremony. After all, it is our families’ common language, the one we mostly use to communicate with each other, and last but not least, the language in which we met and fell in love. The second language of choice was of course English. The arguments in favor in this case were that the wedding ceremony was to take place in San Francisco, the city that is home for us; many of our local friends do not speak perfect Spanish, some speak no Spanish at all; and English is the language we use for business and politics, at home. We also thought that an English-Spanish ceremony would be a loyal expression of our bilingual lifestyle and the T/I trade which we both practice.
But what about Hebrew, the language which still comprises most of my cultural world, the language in which I will always dream, do math and curse? My Hebrew-speaking friends thought we shouldn’t leave out this important part of what I am. I agreed. But a trilingual ceremony would have been a taxing one, and there was no real need to use Hebrew as a language of the ceremony, since all Hebrew speakers who were expected to attend spoke either English or Spanish almost as a native language.
We started with the invitations. We decided to use our own DTP skills and means, and print the invitations, about 200 of them, at home. We are not sure it was the most economical option, but it certainly gave us control, which we, of course, love. We printed out two versions of invitations and the attached instructions-to-the-ceremony-site page: English and Spanish. Interestingly, perhaps because English is our business language, we felt more comfortable drafting the text in English and then translating it into Spanish. Being a right-to-left language, printing out invitations in Hebrew would have strained our technical abilities too much. However, I did add an extra page in Hebrew for our Hebrew speaking invitees, which was a personal letter from me with some useful information about fares and accommodation options, since most recipients would have had to plan a special trip or a vacation in Northern California if they decided to come to our wedding. And so, we matched the language of the invitation to the language we use to communicate with the addressee, and sealed the envelopes.
A few months later, we delved into the details of the ceremony. Not only are we a multi-lingual couple, we are also “atheists of different faiths”, as Francisco likes putting it. In our case, we were drawing from both Catholic and Jewish traditions when preparing our own wedding ceremony. Luckily, the differences are not that vast. Having taken care of legalities some months earlier in City Hall, we did not really need anyone to officiate at the ceremony. Rather, we wanted our friends and family members to take part in the ceremony not merely as witnesses to our union. And, of course, we wanted them to do it in more than just one language. Being consecutive interpreters, we realized that since each text was to be read at least twice, we would have to limit the length of the texts, or else we would bore our guests with too long a ceremony before the awaited reception.
At the beginning of the Catholic wedding ceremony, there’s a reading from the Bible. Secular and liberal as we are, we chose one on the female lover’s dream sequences from the Song of Songs (3: 1-4), and used Ariel and Chana Bloch’s beautiful, new translation of it into English, and the rather canonized De Reina’s translation into Spanish. Of course, this is where Hebrew came in handy: we actually had the privilege of being able to read the text in its original language, and so asked three of our women friends and relatives to read the passage, each in a different language. Later on in the ceremony, upon exchanging rings, we ourselves read another short passage from Song of Songs (8:6), each in his/her native tongue(s).
Also from the Catholic tradition, we asked a friend who among other things is a talented writer and speaker to write a “sermon” for us. We introduced him by e-mail to one of our translator friends, who translated the sermon into Spanish. In the ceremony itself, she was reading the Spanish translation after each paragraph that he read of the English original. This was the longest text in the program, but we must acknowledge our friends’ cooperation in respecting the time limitations we imposed on them.
Vows are rather foreign to the Jewish wedding ceremony. Some less traditional couples write them, nevertheless, as a part of their Ketubah, which is a legal certificate signed at the time of the wedding. Originally, it used to guarantee the economic wellbeing of the wife in times when women were completely dependent on their husbands. Whatever shape they take, these vows are not read in public. We wrote our vows, again in English, and then translated them into Spanish. Since it was Francisco who led the writing of this part of the ceremony, we thought it would be proper for him to read them in their original language, and so I repeated them in Spanish after him.
The most creative part of the ceremony was the Seven Blessings. In the Jewish ceremony they are read by the officiating Rabbi. Only the last two blessings have the bride and groom as their subject. The rest of the blessings have to do with the wider circles of the couple’s life. We decided to follow a similar rationale, and asked seven of our relatives and friends to prepare blessings for us, starting with our students, and moving closer to us, to our parents and intimate friends. Again, we had to instruct everybody to be very brief. The non-bilingual among our friends had to forward us a copy of the texts they were going to read, so we could translate them into Spanish. Thus, the groom found himself translating quite a bit in the days prior to his wedding. The next step was to find a Spanish speaker from among the guests who could read the translation along with the person who wrote and offered the blessing. Luckily, in our community of translator friends and among our bilingual families, the task was not particularly hard. All we had to see to was that everybody had their texts (glued to a nice card, for the sake of uniformity). It was heartwarming to watch some of our friends who had never met before collaborate in our honor.
Some curious things happened. My mother, a native speaker of Spanish, chose to dedicate to us the lyrics of a song in Hebrew, the language and culture she had made her own in the last 38 years or so. I translated the song into English, and Francisco translated my translation into Spanish. Then we read our translations together with my mother in this tri-lingual blessing, one of the most moving we had. Another blessing was a song offered in Hebrew by our housemate and friend, who does not speak a word of this language. Two other blessings included a song in Hebrew as well, and one included a song in Spanish. In all of them, a translation into the other language(s) was offered before or after the song. So yes, Hebrew was quite present in our ceremony, usually in original poetry and songs.
In only one case did we decide not to use translation. Our Ketubah, which is also an object of art, had a verse from he Song of Songs (6:3), according to our choice, incorporated into its custom-made frame. We liked the reciprocity of this verse, which is usually translated into English as “I am to my beloved and he is mine”. However, I felt that this translation was restricting the original Hebrew by conveying only one possible reading of the verse. Other possible readings are “I am there for my lover and he is there for me”, “I support my lover and he supports me”. Since we couldn’t really come up with any better rendering, we decided to use the Hebrew only and so preserve all these additional meanings of this untranslatable, beautiful verse.
Our wedding ceremony lasted a bit under an hour, and turned out to be a memorable event, among other reasons, because of the three languages used, and thanks to 26 out of our 78 guests who actually participated by writing, translating, reading out, singing or playing musical pieces. As to us, we enjoyed our wedding much more than we expected, in spite of the hard work it entailed, and we are now concentrating on living happily ever after.
NCTA members Merav Rozenblum (English/Spanish-Hebrew) and Francisco Hulse (English-Spanish) were married on October 12th, 2003 in San Francisco.
