Law education, present, past and future – a personal tale

 

[Raspberries in different stages*]

I just successfully completed a semester course on contract drafting from the Concord Law School, an accredited online law institution. It had been more than 30 years since I completed my year of law studies at the University of Oregon and some 17 years since I began working as a legal translator. As a result of this course, I reinforced my opinions about learning and age, my previous career opinions and I best manner of legal writing.

In the spirit the well-known expression, education is somewhat wasted on the youth. I discovered that not only was I able to follow and keep up with complicated material at the “old” age of 60, I actually understood and absorbed it better than I did then. To clarify, my discovery was that my many years of experience translating contracts as well as the immediate need to apply my learning allowed me to achieve more learning. Far from age being a disadvantage, I not only still “have it” but am much a better law student today than I was then. For the record, my average on the course was 86 but the main satisfaction was proving to myself that I was still capable of formal learning.

The course also calmed any doubts I had had about my choice then to not continue law school. I completed the year not on probation. Those that went to law school will understand the significance of that. However, after 3 days, I already understood that I lacked any of the main motivations to become an attorney, specifically, the drive for money, fame or justice. The knowledge I gained from that year helped me greatly in my second career but I do not claim that I knew that at the time. Nothing in life is wasted, including seemingly irrelevant knowledge, but we do not know when we will need it. This course resurrected the mixed feeling of the love of legal theory and language and a lack of interest in actually working as an attorney. As I wrote in a previous post, intuition is generally correct.

Finally, the course material, both that previously known and that new to me, reinforced my belief that legal language in English, like all text in English, can and should be clear and accessible. Steven Erikson wrote that tradition was the last bastion of fools. Clearly, fools did not write legalese but there is no justification today for writing texts that only judges and attorneys can understand. Part of the course involved understanding and rewriting contracts and regulations in such a manner that not only simplified the language while retaining the content but also brought out inconsistencies and omissions in the original text, which had been long lost in the circuitous phasing. With this knowledge, I will confidently apply plain but correct language in my translations and strive to educate other translators that “garbage in, garbage out” is not an effective strategy either for the legal customer or translator. I now am fully certain that legalese can be understandable to lay people without losing precision.

Thus, with no homework this Saturday and feeling “free” just like any student after the end of the semester, I look back on my course on writing contracts with great satisfaction in regards to my understanding then and now. Furthermore, I intend to share my knowledge of the relevant techniques with others at any opportunity. Education is growth at any time of one’s life.

For those interested in more information on plain English in legal writing, I will be giving a 2-hour workshop at the Translation and Localization Conference at the end of September.

* Picture subtles help the blind access the Internet.

Picture credit: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/elstef-3091248/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=5298416">Elstef</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=5298416">Pixabay</a>

Second-cousin languages

 

[Cousins*]

All that glitters is not gold nor do any identical letters make for identical languages. The confusion is not between Spanish and Italian or German and Dutch, languages that evolved sufficiently long ago so as to be immediately distinguishable, but instead between languages that are directly related by history but have only recently (in historical terms) gone different ways.

One example is French from France as compared to that written in Quebec. Clearly, the letters and grammar are identical as are most of the words. However, a deeper analysis would identify some traps for the unsuspecting translator. On the one hand, Quebecois tends to more firmly insist on French roots as compared to English roots in business, e.g., réunion and planification instead of the free French use of meeting and planning. On the other hand, funny Americanisms, such a chien chaud for hot dog, do show up. On a lexical note, French-Canadian meanings can differ, including déjeuner and dîner are breakfast and lunch, respectively, in Quebec as compared to the Parisian petit déjeuner and déjeuner. For more information see https://www.technitrad.com/the-differences-between-french-and-canadian-french-when-translating-professional-documents/ Both customers and translators should confirm the source of the French text.

Hebrew and Yiddish share the same letters but have different vocabulary sources. Hebrew uses roots derived from Hebrew and Aramaic with some more recent English and Russian additions. On a humorous note, I just heard a music judge say “lejamjem”, meaning to have a jam session. By contrast, Yiddish is a localized combination of Hebrew, Russian, Polish and German roots, transliterated into Hebrew applying Yiddish grammar. It was the language that allowed Jews from all over Eastern Europe and Russia to communicate with each other. Clients see the Hebrew letters and assume that the text is in Hebrew. While a non-Yiddish speaker can understand some of the text, it is a language in itself.

My personal bugaboo is Ukrainian. I translate many certificates from Russian and occasionally don’t pay attention to the entire text when quoting. Only upon started the job do I discover that the months of the year are different. Curiously enough, the Ukrainians use a much older system of month names based on agriculture and plants, naming each month for that feature of it. For example, travyen means grass and is the equivalent of May while Syerpen means a sickle and is the equivalent to August.  For a beautiful presentation of the Ukrainian calendar see https://www.ukrainianlessons.com/months/.This is only one of the differences in these two separate languages but it is easy to catch and helps me avoid having to find a Ukrainian translator. Not all Cyrillic languages are created equally.

In the most perfect of worlds, translators would always read the entire document carefully before proposing a price and accepting a job. In reality, there are occasional lapses. As Bregalad the Ent would say, they are occasionally "hasty" and don’t properly check the source text to identify the actual language, creating a solvable but avoidable problem. On the bright side, it does make for a funny story.

* Picture captions allow the blind to access the Internet. 

Picture credit: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/thevirtualdenise-5804203/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2491047">Denise Husted</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2491047">Pixabay</a>

Yahrzeit – Thoughts one year after my father’s death

 

In Judaism, the one-year anniversary of person’s death is an important milestone, representing the end of bereavement and a time for contemplation. My father, Melvyn Spector Rifkind, died last year on June 14 (22 Sivan) at the age of 95 from complications from a stroke. Since then, through conversation and filed-away papers, I, his youngest son, have learned much both about him and myself. This deepening understanding of who he was has led me to a greater sense of thanks, appreciation and acceptance.

Thanks: I can thank my father for providing for us financially, instilling important values and preparing us to be adults. While he never achieved his dream financial goal, he made sure that neither my mother nor I and my brother will want of money. He was a brilliant investor to his last days, outperforming industry experts. Careful in his investments, he almost never fell in love with them and knew when to sell. Furthermore, he taught by example that we should work hard, honestly and ethically to advance ourselves and that the means are no less important the goal. Finally, he succeeded in one of the hardest tasks parents have: preparing their children to stand on their own feet. It is painfully ironic that the litmus test of effective parenting is no longer being needed. Children need to learn how to make our own decisions, learn from our errors and accept responsibility. For this education, I am grateful.

Appreciation: I have also learned to appreciate his achievements, modesty and wisdom. My father, like most of his generation, has a difficult childhood, having to deal with poverty, immigrant parents, and World War II.  He succeeded in becoming a journalist and later a top figure in financial public relations and began a new life in Los Angeles with almost no money in his pocket. He fought in the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge) and Metz, experiences that marked him for life. Yet, he never talked either about his difficulties or his successes. He exemplified that idea that rewards, whether financial or public recognition, are not the goal in life but instead tools to help create a good life for his family and the community. He generously gave to charity but quietly filed away the letters of gratitude he received. The world was not about him but our role in it. Finally, I have discovered how many of my attitudes came from him. He did not believe that people fundamentally change, a bit like Emile Zola, but accepted people as they were, warts and all. His few close friends were intelligent and generous. Without being rude, he chose not share his time with fools and buffoons. I fully understand and agree.

Acceptance: In this year, I have accepted his death and am happy that he died before corona would have completely isolated him from all that he loved. I also know that he was thoroughly familiar with the strengths and weakness of his sons. Our failure to meet his hopes at any given time may have saddened or angered him for a moment, but he moved on and continued to believe in us, never saying "I told you so". He did not try to change us but instead accentuatde the positive, as the song goes. I have strived to apply this approach when raising my own daughter. Being similar in nature, I saw many of his shortcoming even while he was alive and viewed them as an essential part of him. However, I now better understand their origin and their place. As Edith Piaf, there is nothing to be regretted.

 In English, the phrase for deceased people is “May they rest in peace” while in Hebrew it is “May their memory be blessed”. To my father, I can say that you can rest in peace because your memory is blessed.

Native disturbance – first language interference and Hebrew/English errors

 

[Two adjacent clocks with different times*]

As anybody that has lived a foreign language or spent significant time with foreigners can attest, the native language creates challenges in fully mastering a foreign language. These interference errors often seem to be more resolute than the ability and desire to stop making them.  In many cases, non-native speakers never succeed in removing these inappropriate borrowings. Having lived in Israel for 32 years (immigrating on this date in 1989) and taught English to Israelis for the same period, I have experienced and observed certain error patterns in my Hebrew and the English of my students. These errors include sounds, gender issues and syntax constructions. Some of them are less critical than others but definitely mark the origin of the speaker.

[Sound space network]

The sounds of the different language family groups vary, making it difficult for learners, especially adult ones, to pronounce or distinguish certain letters. For Americans and Brits in Israel, the most common confusion is between alef א and ayin ע, which are pronounced [a] and [aa], respectively. Fortunately, most native Hebrew speakers tend to blur the difference, taking foreigners off the hook. On a more serious note are the Hebrew letters hay ה, het ח and chof כ,ף, with the first a soft h sound and the other two a guttural ch. The correct pronunciation distinguishes lah לה, meaning to her, from lach לך, to you. By contrast, Israelis struggle with distinguishing short and long vowels. For example, Israeli pronunciation of the word feet and sheet often more closely resembles fit and shit, which are neither homonyms nor synonyms. It is possible to train the mouth to properly pronounce these sounds but this improvement takes sustained effort.

[couple]

Hebrew, being a Semitic language, makes gender/number agreement an essential aspect of its structure while English is limited to natural gender. This requirement for grammatical agreement leads to repeated errors by English speaking expats living in Israel. They sometimes simply forget to pay attention to the gender of the noun and randomly use the masculine or feminine form of the adjective and sometimes the verb, frequently immediately correcting it at the end of the sentence. The effect of such errors is a lack of aesthetics but fundamentally does not prevent understanding. More embarrassingly, the Hebrew word for you is different for men and women, whether in the singular in plural form, specifically אתה [ata] and אתם [atem] for men and את [at] and אתן [aten] for women. English speakers don’t always remember to think before speaking and use the wrong form. Sharing a house with women, I tend to use at even when I should use ata and end up sounding rather stupid. The 2^nd person command form also has masculine and feminine forms, with the same result.  Native Hebrew speakers have an equally difficult time removing gender. They tend to forget that he and she only refer to a biological gender with everything else being it. As a result, a company becomes a she because it is a feminine noun in Hebrew while a house is a he. Certain nouns in Hebrew are plural, such as sky and water, are occasionally referred to as they by Hebrew speakers. It turns out that gender differences are also confusing in languages.

[parts of speech]

Every language has its own syntax but the difference between languages from different families can be rather significant. In Hebrew, prepositions, (e.g., on and in) are letters attached to words, with each word retaining its own preposition.  To demonstrate, in English, you can say, “I got tired of the noise and cars of the city” with the preposition of implicitly linked to the word cars. In Hebrew, you would have to add the preposition of (meh מ) to both nouns. Curiously, many otherwise knowledgeable expats are unaware of this fact. On a more practical level, when Brits literally translate their English construction of “It’s hot today”, זה חם היום [ze cham hayom], it is incorrect as Hebrew eschews the it is construction with the correct form being “hot today” חם היום [cham hayom]. By contrast, Israelis tend to err when using the connecting term for example in writing. While in formal Hebrew, it is correct to add a colon after the term and then write the examples, in English the rules of composition require a full sentence after it (as compared to the expressions such as and including). Temporal clauses are also traps for Israel as they tend to apply the Hebrew logic of putting the verb in the future. The result is “When I will arrive, I will call you,”, which no native English speaker would ever say.  Likewise, after modals, Israelis sometimes use the infinitive instead of the base form, e.g. The car can to break down anytime’ because Hebrew modals are followed by the infinitive. Thus, native language syntax does invade learned languages.

Clearly, the vast majority of language learners never reach completely native level of a foreign language partly because of first language interference. Some transference will always occur. However, most of these mistakes actually do not affect comprehension. Furthermore, native speakers are generally willing to forgive foreigners for these errors and focus on the positive. As in dealing with any type of disturbance, it helps to have a sense of humor regardless of your role, speaker or listener.

* Add picture capitons to help the blind access the Internet. Pictures via Pixabay.