Med veg vettings or curious cases of vegetable nomenclatures

 

Mediterranean cuisine is known for its use of vegetables. Curiously, many of the most typical vegetables in the cuisine are not native to the area, meaning they were imported and had to be named. As any player in a telephone game knows, fascinating versions of the original can arise, which can now be seen today in green grocer’s sign in any given country. As an example, the history of the naming of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants shows some of the methods of the madness of naming.

Tomatoes are a staple of Italian and most southern European cooking. They originated in South America. The Aztecs referred to them as tomatl, a name that the Spanish brought back to Europe and is reflected in English and French, among others. However, the Italians received the yellow version of the fruit. As with all exotic foods, marketing is key. Therefore, it was called a  “golden apple”, i.e., pomo d’oro, which became pomodore in one word. The Hebrew story is even more wild. In the late 19^th century when Eliezer Ben Yehuda and others were re-establishing Hebrew as a daily language and inventing words for modern terms, Eliezer Ben Yehuda decided on the word עגבניה [agvania], which is derived from the root for passion or great pleasure. As in most matters in Israel, many people disagreed but eventually agvania became the known and accepted term of this omnipresent vegetable. Marketing and accidents of import had an impact.

Peppers, another South American immigrant to European kitchens, also took a curious path. Europeans had used pepper corns, an imported nut, to spice their food for a long time. With the arrival of peppers, both hot and sweet, the Europeans added an element and confused the matter. Specifically, the word pepper refers both to the plant and spice. See paprika in Hungarian and peperoni in Italian, which also designate the plant. In English, the easy solution was the addition of bell or the color to the vegetable name, e.g., green or bell peppers. However, in Israel, agriculture is a passion. Local agronomists have always sought to improve variants, e.g., the cherry tomato. For example, Israel stores always carry a light green bell papper, ideal for stuffing. It is known as a Nahariya pepper because it was developed near Nahariya, a small town on the coast near the Lebanese border. Israelis are also major consumers of gombot, a red bell pepper. The name derives from an Italian variant, a gamba, and now refers to most large red bell peppers in Israel. Of course, each country has countless variants of this pepper, which is far more than a spice.

Last but not least is the royal eggplant. Probably originally from South Asia, it traveled via Persia, North Africa and Catalonia to reach European kitchens. The word origin is the Sanskrit vātiga-gama, which means “the plant that cures the wind”, and Arabic al-bādhinjān. That last version explains the French “aubergine” (with the Arabic “the”, al, being absorbed as a root). As for the English eggplant , it appears that initially the English in India were rather fond of a white skinned variant, hence the eggplant. As usual, Hebrew presents the most confusing story. Based on a post on the subject, חציל [hatzil] is a new Hebrew word invented in the late 19th century based on a rare Arabic word, حَيْصَل, [haizal]. As usual, many others suggested alternatives. The eggplant does enjoy a wide variety of calling cards.

It is hard to imagine Mediterranean cooking or any other kitchen without these basic vegetables. Yet, they came as immigrants and experienced the same name confusion as many human immigrants have experienced. A rose is a rose is a rose but it may have a local name, which is all the fun. Nomenclature is a product of both intention and accident also in Mediterranean vegetables.

All pictures from Pixabay

Rebranding or nostalgia ain’t what it used to be

 

This last week, linguists celebrated International Translation Day. Many translator organizations and sites marked the occasion, notably Proz.com, which featured two days of lectures and discussions on the state of the profession. Of course, the speakers mentioned AI numerous times, often in the context of how it impacts the profession. Most importantly, the various speakers analyzed the different ways that translators can continue to make a living given an uncertain future that will definitely include AI. One sentence struck a strong chord: whatever you do, do what you love because your passion affects the quality, which is the most important advantage human translators can have over AI. Furthermore, one lecturer noted there will always be a need for expert translators in specialist fields even with improved AI. In that light, I understand that I need to react to the changes in the market in my over 22 years of translation before it is too late. Unfortunately, I do not receive much pleasure when editing or using AI. Thus, I have decided to embrace my experience, drop my other areas of translation and specialize in one field, specifically Hebrew to English legal translation, as it provides the base for my future in all respects.

When I first started translation in 2004, I knew little of my skills or the translation world and chose to cast a wide net. I started my journey by preparing an inventory of my knowledge, specifically four languages, specifically English, Hebrew, French and Russian, and two areas of knowledge, law and finance. Small translation agencies dominated the market at the time. Thus, it seemed logical to create a multilingual brand with several specializations to catch the most fish. I did not know enough to identify any specific target markets and thus created, in effect, a more general brand.

The market had changed radically since then, primarily due to technology and conglomeration. AI and machine translation of all types have eliminated many market niches, including email and personal translation. At the same time, the same technology has created a strong demand for machine translation post editing (MTPE). On an organizational level, large international corporations have gobbled up one small agency after another, creating large volume, low-cost translation venues at the expense of translator rates. At the same time, it should be noted that many well-paying niches not only exist but are thriving, notably legal, medical, marketing and transcreation, which provide ample opportunity for qualified linguists.

As I considered my future (Yom Kippur is an ideal day for doing that), I finally understood that my initial approach, however relevant it was at the time, is no longer effective. I am now choosing to formally embrace the field I enjoy the most, work most efficiently and am most proficient at [Winston Churchill said it was proper to end a sentence with a preposition]. I will solely focus on Hebrew- to-English legal translation, which is mainly what I have been doing for some 10 years now. I have studied legal writing, especially Plain English. Moreover, I am not only quite efficient in translating and editing legal translation but am more proficient at them than many other translators. Thus, as far as anybody can foresee the future, I feel my career has a solid basis.

Giving up the past is never easy. For that reason, people hold on to objects that no longer have any practical value. I still enjoy reading and speaking French. As for Russian, it is quite a useful language in Israel. I may choose to take on a small appropriate task in those languages. However, there is no feeling like doing a task very well especially if it is something that you enjoy. As for the price of rebranding, it requires redoing my marketing approach but better late than never. It may be fun to look back from time to time but success requires forward-looking.

AI and the future of freelance translating – a perspective

 

Freelance translators, like many other professionals, see dark clouds. The media feeds stories on the ever-improving ability of AI to translate. Strangers innocently ask why anybody needs translators anymore. Customers and income decrease month to month. It is all quite depressing but not necessarily a full or accurate picture in the long term. On the contrary, paid translation needs are actually expanding. Moreover, the market niches that AI is destroying have been in decline for over a decade due to technological changes. In practice, AI changes the translation business but not only does it not eliminate freelance business but can even provide an opportunity to expand. It is reasonable to be cautiously optimistic despite all the apparent omens.

In terms of current trends for language service providers, which includes both agencies and freelancers, the future seems quite optimistic. Based on the total volume of the worldwide agencies, demand for linguistic services continues to increase steadily. Experts predict that the value of these services will increase approximately 28% from 2024 to 2027 to around 90 billion USD. World trade and the needs of international commerce will continue to feed the demand. To be fair, international agencies are taking a lion’s share of business with freelancers struggling with downward pressure on their rates. B2B business, without agencies, requires more marketing effort, skill and confidence, which many freelancers lack. Yet, in practice, there is a steady demand for translators.

It is important to note that translation technology, which includes but is not limited to AI, shapes which niches will remain and even expand and which ones will decline and disappear. For ten years, machine translation of all types has automated the translation process. Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) and translation memory began defining the work process over 15 years ago. Machine translation, most notably Google Translation, has made simple translation accessible and free to the average person for almost 20 years. More specialized translation memories, in particular neural translation in recent years, make it possible to effectively translate large masses of specialized legal and other material in a short time. There is less and less work available for a general translator because of the plethora of no-cost and sufficiently effective alternatives. By contrast, these machine translations, including AI, struggle to produce effective results when the message goes beyond mere understanding but requires precision or a human touch.  Some fields suffering from a lack of proficient human translators include medical, marketing, legal and technical translation. Furthermore, the need for official certification of government documents for court and bureaucratic purposes creates a steady market for certified translators of all types. Specialists can find lucrative niches.

The various language technologies have changed the whole panorama of translation in terms of methods and tasks. The use of CAT tools is a requirement for many projects and has significantly increased productivity and shaped its rates. Machine translation serves as a basis for many initial drafts, either in terms of suggestions or complete translation. AI can instantly produce a large-scale translation, albeit of highly uneven quality. Thus, the translator’s work may involve editing machine translation, actual translation or both. Clearly, not every freelancer wishes to be involved in editing but those that accept it and do it efficiently and effectively are in demand. By contrast, those freelancers that completely reject technology find their market shrinking. The name of the game is constant adaptation.

Thus, it is clear that translation is not only not a dying profession but instead one with a future. Technology will shape its future, as it has done in its past and present. Specialized and flexible translators can find an opportunity to make a living. The most difficult period is the transition during which the advantages and limitations of each new digital tool emerge and define the market. AI is not the end of human translators just as Google Translate and its cousins were not. They merely shaped the profession. It is most probable that for the foreseeable future human translators will continue to handle those tasks where it is important to fully convey the meaning of one language in another language and where approximation is not sufficient as well as ensure that machine translation does not create unnecessary or even dangerous mistranslations. Many current AI uses will return to human translation as issues arise from AI translation.  I am cautiously optimistic about the future of translation despite AI.

Online conference success – a perfect small package

 

Last week, I participated in an online conference presented by ILETA (International Legal English Trainers’ Academy) and organized by Sofia Parastatidou. Curiously, it was the best online conference I have ever attended precisely because it was organized so differently from an in-person conference. The factors that contributed to its success were the limited but highly coherent content, the small number of participants and its short but flexible schedule. In practice, the conference left the impression of having physically attended without all the logistics.

In general, online conferences, however economical and convenient they may be, suffer from issues of downtime, lack of intimacy and mental fatigue. As most online conferences have only one track and try to reach the largest potential audience, many of the lectures are irrelevant to a certain percentage of the participants. In a physical conference, this dead time is ideal for networking but online conferences do not offer such opportunities. A more serious issue is that the audience in larger remote conferences is literally a sea of faces. It is very clumsy to interact with other participants during the conference. As many cultures consider efficiency and timeliness virtues, the host keeps the schedule moving more or less on time, leaving very little time for open discussions while everybody is present. The consequence is a large quantity of intellectual material but very few connections.

In this conference, the lectures related to a narrow topic, specifically legal language, and, most importantly, complemented and supplemented each other. Each lecturer went into depth on an aspect mentioned by a previous presenter, thus creating a complete picture. For example, I spoke about the rules of Plain English in legal writing while Anna Sobota and Anna Setkowicz-Ryszka, respectively, analysed its actual implementation using statistical methods and showed how the difference between how attorneys and linguists view proper legal language. The presentations built on each other.

This online conference highlighted the strength of distance learning. It would have been completely impractical to bring together all of the participants as each of us lived in a different country. Thus, Zoom allowed all of us to participate. More importantly, given the relatively small number of persons involved, everybody could easily see each other's faces, ask questions, make comments and have their say. There was more than enough airtime for everybody. Clearly, less is more in online events.

The strangest aspect, surprisingly positive, was the lack of a firm time structure. The host ran it on Italian time, meaning she let discussions continue until they died a natural death. Thus, we had the opportunity to discuss issues raised in the presentation before going on to the next segment. The “price” was that there were only a limited number of lectures in the day-and-a-half long conference. However, the benefit is that it is far easier to retain the content. As an analogy, seeing one museum in a day is memorable while visiting three museums in a day creates a muddled picture.  Again, less was more.

In summary, the ILETA conference virtually felt like an in-person conference. It provided both content and interaction, feeling like a conversation in a cozy salon rather than a distant event. The keys were highly focused content, similarly engaged persons and flexibility. It was a perfect day, showcasing the potential of a properly organized online conference.

Selective non-genius – Differentiating the art from the person

 

Last week, I attended a lecture by the journalist Uri Misgav on the subject of the songs of Mati Caspi, an Israeli musician, singer, arranger, and producer responsible for over 1000 songs over several decades. I am familiar with his songs as are most people in Israel but was less than enthusiastic about this lecture because I find his performances unexciting at best because of his persona on stage. Specifically, he looks and acts like a dead fish. In his case, I find it difficult to ignore the person and fully appreciate his work. However, in many art forms, fans can and do ignore the person beyond the work. They are able to relate to the art form and ignore the character of the artist behind it even when the character is particularly loathsome in some ways.

Many gifted writers were unpleasant people. Dostoevsky was a virulent anti-antisemite and misanthrope in general. While those characteristics may have had a positive role in creating his literary characters, I would not have wanted to meet him (nor the other way around, I assume). Leo (not Alexei) Tolstoy, for all his literary and philosophical heights, abandoned his wife and eight children so he could consider more mystic thoughts. George Simenon, the creator of amazing Jules Maigret detective stories, told his wife in the middle of the German occupation that if she did not like him sleeping with the maid, she could go to the Germans and complain. How charming and sensitive! Many Académie française writers, notably Louis-Ferdinand Céline, were fervent Nazis and virulent antisemites. In the UK, Rudyard Kipling was an unapologetic supporter of colonialism long after its warts had begun to show. Yet, it is possible to read the books of these writers with undiminished pleasure and ignore their political views, possibly because we do not actually see the person.

Artists in other media have also shown a mean streak. Among the musicians with a spoiled reputation (at least among some people) is Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame due to his anti-Israel and antisemitic calls and political action. In Israel, a certain famous singer is infamous for alleged aggression against women and those critics that dare raise those allegations in public. Some actors also exceed the bounds of acceptable behavior. Many French are not thrilled by Gérard Depardieu leaving France for Russia to avoid French tax, not to mention his alleged sexual offenses. In the United States, Charlton Heston may have starred in some famous movies but he was also president of the National Rifle Association, whose agenda is not exactly mainstream. Personally, I find it difficult to separate the person from the art in these cases, again possibly due to the artist's actual presence on a stage.

The saying is that the way to hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe the way to heaven is filled with sharp pebbles. Depending on the level of clash between the audience and the artist as well as the genre of art, many people can overlook the unpleasant aspects of a creator and focus on the result itself. In other cases, the leakage or linkage is too strong to ignore, significantly reducing the greatness of that artist in some way. Ultimately, each person chooses to focus narrowly on the genius or include the whole character.

Simple marketing methods for reluctant freelancers

 

Most freelancers enjoy their craft but are less enthusiastic about what they need to do to make a living from it. One of these necessary evils is marketing. As in most chores, nobody argues the necessity of doing it in theory but everybody hopes that it will get done without their intervention. The reality is that it is impossible to have a successful freelance business without some type of marketing. Here are five simple marketing techniques that involve little effort, time and personal exposure. In other words, it is possible to mark a check on this item in the to-do list without great personal investment and see some results.

1.       Let your friends and, more importantly, the service people you use know what your profession is and the type of projects you do. Your accountant, insurance agent and hairdresser/barber, to name just a few, are your best marketing partners. They are constantly meeting people and provide great referrals.

2.      Set up a website or a LinkedIn profile. The first may require a small investment of time and money but the latter is simple and free and takes minutes. Make it easy for potential customers to glean more information about you and find your contact information. Most people are not willing to make any great effort to find you. Don’t lose business by playing hard to get.

3.      Set up a business page on Facebook or other media. You can and should keep your personal life out of it. Instead, showcase your business in terms of skill and achievement. Enlist your children to help you if they are the appropriate age. It is a great bonding exercise.

4.      Sign up for any relevant list or application for selling your services or goods. Define a relevant geographical range and join. If participation involves some payment, it is often worth it for a year as they tend not to remove your name after you stop paying.

5.      Whenever possible, participate in discussions involving issues within your expertise, written or oral, whichever you are more comfortable with. You don’t have to and often should not “sell” your business. Instead, publicize your expertise by suggesting practical solutions. You are branding yourself.

None of these actions requires standing up in front of people and talking about how wonderful you are. Aside from a website, none of them involves serious costs, if any. They don’t have to be perfect in the beginning as it is simple to change the content and language. There is no need to consult a tech expert. As the advert for the Lake Wobegon’s celebrated Powder Milk Biscuits said, keeping it simple can “give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.”

FinTech gleamings

 

Profiting from the traditional August business slowdown, I participated in a two-hour webinar presented by Silvana Debonis entitled “Securitization to Tokenization: What FinTech Translators Need to Know” under the auspices of the American Translation Association (ATA). Although I am a financial translator, I found myself completely ignorant of FinTech partially because it did not exist when I studied for my MBA several decades ago. Thus, I had the opportunity to remedy, at least partially, my ignorance. I wish to share a few of my understandings gained through this webinar with anybody that is also bewildered by this alien terminology. My take was that traditional financial concepts and processes have met Buck Rogers in the 21^st century and were not only renamed but also reshaped. I have to admit that some of the actual and potential applications do excite me.

The key concept in FinTech and the initial challenge is the term blockchain. In practice, it is an old procedure given a new nomenclature and method. To explain, in the 19^th century, if a person bought a piece of land or any tangible asset, the sale became official once an official made a ledger entry in an official book. The 21^st-century equivalent, the blockchain, represents the same process but takes advantage of digital technology. The ledger entry has now become a block, a digital record. However, today, any recognized source, a node, can simultaneously upload the block to millions of computers, a chain, making it impossible to erase and rendering that information immediately accessible to any interested party. Blockchain is a bit like title keeping on steroids.

To sell the asset, tokenization is necessary. To explain that term, imagine the world before governments stopped maintaining a “gold standard”. Before the mid-19^th century, money was a weight of precious metal, e.g., a pound, a lira, a piece of eight. During the American Civil War in the 1860’s, it was necessary to produce more money than metal reserves allowed. As a result, the U.S. government produced dollar bills, greenbacks, which theoretically could be exchanged for the equivalent of gold or silver, i.e., tokens for the actual metal. Eventually, these tokens became valuable in themselves as the US government no longer maintained a gold standard. In the stock market, stock certificates are the token for ownership of a share of a company and are as valuable as the asset the paper represents. In the 20^th century, banks and other financial institutions bunched assets and created large asset pools, e.g., mortgages and loans, which they sold to an external organization, referred to as a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). The latter marketed these assets in a traditional way, i.e., through brokers of all types. Today, tokenization of assets is a digital block containing both a verbal prospectus for humans to understand and programming for computers to process, almost without intermediaries. It is no longer necessary to have physical tokens.

The current and potential uses of blockchain technology are quite exciting. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are the chicken and egg of FinTech as neither would exist without each other. However, many people will never trade in these assets. Of great potential in the future for the average person is Smart Contracts, which are digitalized conditional agreements. For example, if a person has hurricane insurance and an insurance event occurs, it is currently necessary to contact an agent, provide proof and wait for compensation. With Smart Contracts, the insurance automatically goes into effect once a recognized source, an oracle, such as the national weather service, reports the landing of a hurricane in a given area. The insurance policy holder could, in theory, receive the funds within hours of the incident. Smart Contracts eliminate human intermediaries.

Therefore, FinTech is not shark-tagging technology and far less frightening than that animal. All knowledge is useful if not always as a translator but always in the never-ending struggle to understand this world. I strongly recommend taking advantage of ATA webinars, available to both members and non-members, that provide fill that need and expand the mind. Those that attended the session came out more knowledgeable from whatever they gleamed from the webinar.

All images via Pixabay

Exotic or alien – when does a foreign word remain a stranger

 

All speakers and writers choose their words. Linguists, including authors, editors and translators, may invest more time and energy in this choice but even the most basic user seeks the best term in terms of register, connotation and impact. Essentially, the chosen word must sound right, which is a matter of accustomed sound. Words with unusual phonetic signatures sound strange. However, in terms of word choice, as there are no “pure” nations in terms of racial background, there are no pure languages in terms of roots. An exchange of words occurs anytime one culture meets another. In some cases, the words become an integral part of the language and lose their foreignness. In other cases, people use these words despite their non-local origin because there is no substitute in the original language. However. in many cases, speakers of different generations and points of view may disagree whether a given verbal immigrant has any raison d’être as there exists a highly adequate term. The processs never ends.

Some foreign words have been a part of a language for so long that they have become native. For example, in Russian, the word for beach, пляж [plajh], comes from the French plage while the term for a train station вокзал [vokzal] is derived from the English Vauxhall, the name on the first locomotive in Russia (from St. Petersburg to the Tsar’s village). This use of Western terminology does not bother the most nationalistic Russian. Likewise, an insulated American has no problem calling a nice sidewalk eatery a café, as distinguished by its poorer cousin, the coffee shop. New York brokers, Jewish or not, often consult a maven, a word derived from Yiddish and Hebrew, if they need an expert opinion. In Israel, Jews whose family came from Tunisia or Ethiopia use the words קיוסק, kiosk, and צ'ופצ'יק [chupchik], a whatchamacallit, whose origins are in distant Russia, without batting an eyelash. These words have become a basic part of the language.

Other foreign words still sound like immigrants but the language needs them. For example, a party can be fancy or posh but the French chic adds another dimension to the description. For describing a corrupt military dictatorship, there is no better word in English than junta, Spanish in sound and origin, and so succinct. In France, the left-wing parties are now considering holding les primaires, a gem taken from the Anglo-Saxon tradition of primaries and a relatively recent development in French politics. Hebrew is an active borrower of English terms to describe concepts that its limited root system struggles to cope with. For example, business people use the word אֵפֶקְטִיבִי [effectivi] [effective] to emphasize one aspect of the Hebrew word יָעִיל [yail], which encompasses both effectiveness and efficiency. Many Israelis have become quite skilled in terms of their ability לנרמל [lenormel], to normalize, the current situation. Languages must keep up with the times. Sometimes, it is easier to copy than to invent a word.

Nevertheless, foreign adoption can go too far, at least in some people’s eyes. The average American or Brit, depending on socio-economic background, may find it pretentious if a person said a pied-á-terre for a vacation home or “what do you think of my new coif” instead “How’s the haircut?”. The average French may have seemed to accept “le weekend”” and “le shopping” but French intellectuals and writers are far from happy with such terms, especially when the French terms are perfectly sufficient. As for Hebrew, many Israelis cringe when chefs say “crispy” instead of פריך [parich}. Even worse, in the ears of many lovers of the Holy language is the adoption of לקחת חלק [lakahat helek], the literal translation of the English take part, instead of the solid Hebrew word להשתתף [lehishtatef]. Many people believe that speakers should be proud of their language (regardless if so many of its words are derived from foreign roots).

The use of foreign words is a matter of both ideology and usefulness. Clearly, no language academy can determine which foreign word will go native and which will always be a stranger. However, the introduction of foreign words is one of the basic tools for intrinsic language development and occurs quite naturally. The answer to the question whether using a foreign word is chic or a faux pas is subjective by definition, as all language users, including translators, know.

A challenging conversion – the difficulties and rewards of demanding customers

 

Every provider of a service has experienced them – the customers that demand absolute perfection whether it is relevant or not. They see and find every perceived error or inconsistency and will insist on fixing the issue, however unimportant it is and how much work it would take to do it “right”. Suddenly, a simple job becomes a never-ending series of conversations and revisions. The craftsperson wants to scream and tell the client to take a flying leap but cannot. Instead, grinning and bearing it becomes the only option. A more positive method of dealing with such perfectionists is to meet their demands with the knowledge that the willingness to go the extra mile will financially pay off in the future. These customers are the best clients to have in a certain sense.

To clarify what a demanding customer is, it is important to distinguish between price and quality issues. Customers that negotiate money constantly and irrationally are not long-term assets. The energy invested in setting the cost combined with the resulting low rates do not justify the work. Moreover, they will switch to another provider in the blink of an eye as all they care about is price. By contrast, some customers are perfectionists and are only satisfied with the highest quality from themselves and others. It is not personal. The relative importance of a deviance is not relevant as only 100% is acceptable. They have no compunction about demanding correction after correction until the result meets their expectations. In the meantime, the actual time spent on the project has doubled or even tripled. Such people often get under one’s nerves.

However, in the long term, demanding customers are the best long-term asset in terms of direct work and references. Once a provider has passed the test, such a customer is not likely to switch to a less expensive provider as long as there is no change in the work level because they are not always willing to spend the effort to train a replacement. For example, every time my wife buys glasses, it involves numerous adjustments until they are perfect. She has gone to the same patient optometrist for over a decade. She is happy with her glasses but he has clearly profited from her loyalty as he patiently makes the adjustments for each pair. On a marketing level, perfectionists tend to be extreme in their opinion of service providers, i.e., someone is excellent or incompetent, with little in between. When demanding but satisfied clients recommend you, their words have authority and bring results.

Thus, when dealing with the seemingly unsatisfiable customer, it is best to take a deep breath, be patient and think long term. Getting angry does not improve your work, mood or health. Such clients demand a professional approach. When they receive it, they appreciate it. Ultimately, they become loyal customers in all the meanings of that term as well as the anchor of any business.

Pearl Buck wrote (I think) that, regarding the conversion of Asians to Christianity in the 19^th century and early 20^th century, one Japanese convert was worth three Chinese converts as the former would never revert. Likewise, winning over one demanding customer is worth three one-time clients in the long term. Hopefullly, that thought will help some freelancers gather up the patience and strength to go the extra mile.

Housing culture – home imaging

 

“Hidaka’s house wasn’t one of the mansions, but it was definitely large for a couple with no children. Though the peaked gables on the roof gave it a Japanese look, it had bay windows, an arch over the front door and window boxes hanging from the second storey that were clearly Western in design.”*

The task of a translator extends far beyond linguistic matters and necessarily involves creating images. The challenge lies in both visualizing the picture in the original text, obvious to the author, and gracefully reproducing it for the reader unfamiliar with the culture in question. An example of this task is the simple word “house”. While almost all dwellings have at least four walls, they vary in material, dimension, outside façade, inside layout and access to light and air, to name just a few factors. It is clear that the sentence “I loved my parents’ home” may elicit a universal feeling but fails to create a single picture, with each person envisioning the building differently. Often, housing styles may be fairly typical in a given country or region, creating a stereotype for those familiar with them. The actual variances may be quite significant or more subtle as I show in a few examples of “typical” homes.

Spanish houses and apartments, at least in cities, seem to emphasize social space at the expense of the more private spaces. The holiday homes on the Spanish coast have relatively large sitting areas, both outside and inside. By contrast, the kitchen is often quite small, “galley” style in polite terms, often cut off from the social space. Depending on the area, red tiles and arches are quite popular.

·    English dwellings, particularly urban ones, enjoy multiple but small sitting areas, referred to as “cozy”, often leaving me to think that the English like to keep their children’s mess and noise from strangers’ eyes and ears. Curiously enough, the entrance ways are often extremely narrow, barely wide enough for one person to pass through at a time. Based on TV programs, the English appreciate solariums and wooden beams, the symbols of luxury and character.

·    The French are a rather solid people traditionally. The houses are often made of brick or stone, especially in the countryside,  possibly with painted window shutters. Whether urban or rural, the furniture tends to be heavy in line with the style of the walls, with lots of bric-a-brac cluttering the living space. Traditional French dwellings often lack air and light, apparently to reduce the cost of heating the space. French houses are homey but a bit claustrophobic in my eyes.

American West Coast homes are as large as the land allows. The houses are constructed from wood and generally rather standard in construction, but include large rooms, meaningful garden areas, healthy air flow, natural light, central air conditioning and a garage. Ranch house style houses are designed to give the residents space and impress the neighbors. The character and age of the building are not relevant factors. The East Coast has a different tradition but I am not sufficiently familiar to comment.

·    Israeli houses are typical of the Eastern Mediterranean. People are social while the weather is hot. The kitchen and living room, often joined, take proportionally a large part of the livable space, often at the expense of the bedrooms. People seek patio space whenever possible as garden space can significantly raise the purchase price. Upper floors tend to become quite hot and are only practical with air conditioning. The Israeli unique feature is the requirement, both legal and emotional, for some kind of “safe” room, a reinforced area when (not in case) the country is bombed. Many older houses and apartments lack this feature, reducing their desirability. As for color scheme, Israel is a multicultural society, creating a wide variety of furnishing styles.

The translator of the novel cited in the first paragraph was fortunate in that the author himself provided details of the house. Likewise, Honoré de Balzac generally wrote pages about the physical description of the building and each of its rooms. However, most literary translators not only need to be familiar with the architecture but somehow transmit that image. I am quite happy to be a technical translator and not be required to achieve that goal. Yet, the thought does give another meaning to the term “in-house translator”.

* Higashino, K., 2014. Malice translated by A. Smith. London: Abascus.

Memoir translation – lessons learned

 

I am a technical translator – legal, official and other dry material – as Alice would say. However, I have had the opportunity to translate Holocaust period memoirs at various times in my career and have seen how much I have learned not only about the subject of the texts but about the art of translating such narratives, whether in terms of language, editing or expectations. I also enjoy the added benefit of such projects.

To provide some background, I have translated three Holocaust memoirs in my 22-year translation career. My first paid job was the translation of the memoirs of a Belarusian partisan in Minsk from Russian to English. As it was my first professional project, I prefer not to look at what I did and consider it a “paid apprenticeship”. The story was quite interesting, even shocking. I hope that I somehow managed to transmit that aspect. Several years later, I translated the memoirs of a German Jew that was sent to a labor camp in the Baltic area and survived. Curiously enough, he wrote in French. Again, it was an amazing story but I later learned that the commissioning party was not completely satisfied with my translation. I did not receive any specific feedback, meaning that I cannot judge whether that reaction reflected an objective judgment. Recently, I translated the monograph of a Polish Jew from Hebrew to English. I am happy to report that the translation pleased both the editor and the commissioning party and is about to be published. Live and learn.

My first take from my experience with memoirs is to treat them as a story. The writers were not professional writers. In some cases, they did not write in their native language. Thus, the purpose of the translation is to tell a story, one that the reader wants to read to the end. To do so may involve changing the word or even sentence order. My initial instinct, reinforced by my experience, was to rewrite the story in English and not to cling to the original phrasing, all while expressing the tone of the writer, whether it is ironic, sarcastic, or matter-of-fact. A memoir, unlike legal translation, allows much freedom of expression.

However, this combination of freedom and the need to be seamless, i.e., not sound like a translation, makes having an outside editor an absolute requirement. After hours of processing a text and multiple drafts, a translator loses the objective eye. To produce the polished text, even by the slightly lower standards of a memoir as compared to a novel, at least one other pair of eyes is necessary. Furthermore, the use of digital tools, e.g., Grammarly or AI, is vital in identifying language issues in the text that escape the tired eye of the translator. In the literary world, no translator is an island.

Finally, unlike legal translation, literary translation of any kind is ultimately a labor of love. It involves far more hours and effort than technical translation. There are countless technical questions to research, particularly spellings of names of towns, streets and people, which involves a surprising amount of time. For example, I discovered that, at the time, Belarus had no official English map to guide me in spelling the names of the various villages mentioned in the memoir. Furthermore, as there is no limit to the range of acceptable styles of writing as in many types of technical translation, the translator has to question every sentence several times to be sure that it is the best that it can be, a very time-consuming and exhausting experience. Consequently, just as memoir writers put all their heart into their writing, so the translators of their stories must invest all they have and not count hours. It is clear why literary translators generally do not become rich but are very satisfied with the work.

Last week, the editor informed me that the family of the Polish writer was publishing the book and sent me a picture of the cover (until I receive an actual copy). I was quite pleased and even surprised to see that not only did I receive credit for the translation but my name is on the cover page. There is something to be said for actual public credit for your work. True, translating rental contracts is far more profitable and less intensive. However, the joy of sharing an important story and seeing one’s name on the cover is quite extraordinary. It also shows how much I have learned over my career. I am looking forward to my next memoir translation project.

Pride and prejudice – national identity and presence abroad

 

Being a foreign visitor exposes one’s sense of nationality, eliciting varying reactions depending on country, circumstances and personality. When people become the ambassadors of their country, locals receive them in a manner ranging from “the savior of our nation” to a persona non grata, generally somewhere in between. In response, foreign visitors exhibit a certain pride or lack thereof in their homeland as expressed in their willingness to identify themselves as citizens of that country, speak their national language and talk with pride about their home. Of course, a country is made of individuals, each with his/her manner of speaking. However, certain national tendencies do dominate as I will show in regards to Americans, French and Israelis.

Americans have for many centuries believed that America is the best country in the world and English is the only language one needs. Thus, many Americans speak as loud abroad as they do at home, which is often in extreme contrast with the local low tones, such as in Hungary or Germany. Despite having formally learned a foreign language in high school and, in many cases, being in frequent contact with Spanish speakers, most Americans assume that everybody speaks English. Moreover, they also think that most people think America is a great country. Thus, they speak with pride of their country, albeit a bit diminished for some with the advent of Trump. Americans stick out in terms of language. Moreover, not only do they not hide their origin but they are proud of it.

The French relationship with France is a bit more complicated. Most French deeply believe that the French language and culture are superior even if they recognize that the world doesn’t quite see it that way. As a result of that pride and a generally awful system of teaching foreign languages, the average French citizen cannot get by in English or chooses not to do, with exceptions, of course. When asked, they are proud of being French and extol Gaulic values, mainly food, art and sophistication. On the other hand, when asked about their appreciation of its government and policies, alas, according to many studies, the French are not very patriotic and even sometimes rather embarrassed by the current situation. The self-identification “L'État, c'est moi” attributed to Louis XIV is not a sentiment shared by most current French people. It is wonderful to be French but not a French citizen, apparently.

The relationship between Israel and the world is quite complex. To begin with, many Israelis carry a hidden or not-so-hidden concern about anti-Semitism based on events during a long diaspora and in recent years. This suspicion affects Israelis abroad. True, after 1967, Israel gained such status that Israelis traveled abroad with great pride with locals admiring them. Alas, those Halcyon days are long gone, having been replaced by pro-Palestinian demonstrations and violence and open antisemitism in some places. In terms of language, most Israelis, especially younger ones, are quite proficient in English by international standards and can function quite well in English. Thus, Israelis have a choice to speak English or Hebrew. In regards to national pride, while the level may have dropped due to political differences of opinion in Israel, Israelis are among the most patriotic peoples in the world.

To illustrate the dilemma of being an Israeli abroad, I will recount two anecdotes. In 2010, due to a hurricane on the East Coast of the United States, my wife and I had to take a return flight to Israel which involved a 7-hour wait at the connecting airport in Istanbul. On the day before, the Israelis had intercepted the Mavi Marmara, which had been on its way to bring aid to Gaza, resulting in ten deaths. The Turkish government was not pleased, to put it mildly. As we waited in that airport, we suspected that the government would react by hassling Israelis, which they later actually did. As a result, we sat in a quiet part of the airport, avoided attention and spoke in English. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor. By contrast, we have just returned from Germany and the Czech Republic. We made the conscious decision to speak Hebrew openly. For me, I refused to take on the role of the cowed Jew. By the way, nothing happened. The worst reaction was the failure, intentional or not, of a Turkish restaurant manager to understand our country of origin. I consciously chose, as do many Israelis, not to let fear control my life and did not regret that choice. That choice is not always easy.

Thus, in the face of a foreign culture, every traveler chooses an attitude. Whether it is hide or flaunt their identity depends on the person and country. To a certain degree, this decision reflects the travelers’ relations with their country, language and history. Visitors abroad must deal with pride and prejudice as Jane Austin would say.

Upcoming webinar on writing content posts

 

If you are a translator or interpreter in search of a no-cost (aside from time) method of increasing exposure and building a brand, consider writing content posts. I will present a webinar under the aegis of the ATA (American Translators Association) on the why and how of writing content posts, including the use of AI. You can register through the link: https://www.atanet.org/event/writing-translation-content-posts-the-why-and-how/

English impressions - real or TV reality?

 

I have no first-hand knowledge of England. My short jaunt to London during my tour of Europe some 45 years ago is irrelevant. On the other hand, I have watched BBC television for many years now, mainly programs featuring food, travel and house searches. To explain, watching the news in Israel can be quite stressful and generally produces an urgent need for escapism. From all these programs, I have created a certain picture of English life in terms of food, houses and language. However, I am uncertain to what degree this TV picture of life actually reflects reality.

The English attitude towards meals as shown on BBC programs seems a bit extreme. First, it seems that the UK hosts a cult of worship towards ham and bacon, with each person having a strong opinion on the best combination of ingredients, shape and cooking. The English, including Scots, seem to be rather particular about the breakfast meat and view it as a required element of any proper breakfast. The closest equivalent that I have ever observed is the Iraqi obsession with perfect rice and how to properly prepare it, with each grain having to be separate. By contrast, UK diners view vegetables as guests that are only present because of noblesse oblige. The only plant-based materials, aside from potatoes, that grace an English plate are a few green peas, some lonely lettuce leaves or a few controversial Brussels sprouts. A tomato and cucumber salad is exotic in the UK, apparently, not to mention any side dish made from eggplant or zucchini. The final idiosyncrasy, at least as compared to the Middle East, is the reluctance and discomfort of UK diners to eat with their hands and actually touch their food. Whether in the Middle East or  Ethiopia, grabbing a piece of bread and scooping some dip is an act of community bonding. Apparently, such sharing is considered barbaric farther north. It seems that English dining is a bit rigid in content and manner.

UK houses also seem to have certain characteristics. First of all, most residences in the UK shown on the BBC have narrow entranceways, barely wide enough for one person to stand, let alone allow two people to pass each other. They remind me of the Spanish kitchens typical of the vacation flats that the UK holidaygoers seem to fancy. Another desired feature of UK housing is this space called a “solarium”. First of all, it seems a bit absurd given how few days a year the English sun deigns to appear. In sunnier climates, such a room becomes a gigantic oven in short time and is useless. However, maybe I am missing something. Moreover, according to the programs I view, open wood beams in the ceiling are considered “character” and a positive feature. At a glance, I would consider them an ideal place for dust and spider webs. Most interestingly, on the real estate programs, many British house seekers insist on having a pub nearby.  It seems hard to believe the Brits and Scots actually seek these features.

Of course, UK language is different from that of the United States in terms of both words and style. I simply am unsure how much people actually speak like the characters on the BBC do. Americans would never say the words posh, high street and mate, using fancy, main street or name brand and friend or man, respectively. Even more striking is the English avoidance of direct speech. Regardless of the situation, it is apparently acceptable to begin a conversation with “nice weather”. Even more peculiar in my eyes is how far a BBC character will go in order to avoid saying that something is derogative. Such discretion is so unreal and actually may be unreal.

I have no idea how much any of these random impressions of life in the British Isles are true or representative. It is quite possible they do reflect the habits of some of the population just as the content of The Housewives of Atlanta or any similar program does carry a grain or two of truth. I imagine that I would need to spend some time there to better ascertain whether BBC programs reflect reality or pseudo-reality. In the meantime, I can only speculate and be amazed.