Camels and Israel

One of the strangest tourist purchases in Israel is a wooden camel with the word “Jerusalem” printed on it.  First of all, there are and were no camels in Jerusalem.  Secondly, its continued sales suggest that tourists view Israel as a great desert, a smaller version of the Sahara if you will. The reality is that Israel is a small country with a rather wide variety of landscapes, flora, fauna and climates.

The coastal region is flat and humid, albeit with some sand dunes where developers have not yet received building permits. Inland, north and south are very different. The Galilee gently rises from coast, reaching its peak at Mount Hermon, some 9,000 feet above sea level and dropping to the Sea of the Galilee, some 700 feet below sea level.  Rain is plentiful by local standards, meaning that flora thrives most of the year. The summers can be hot, but are far less humid.

Continuing eastwards, the Golan Heights, barely an hour’s drive from the Galilee, is a high volcanic plain, punctuated by gorges and flowing rivers (streams in other countries).  Hot in the summer and cold, even snowing, in the winter, it is a place rich with plants, including wineries, and animals with few human inhabitants.  My wife and I recently spend a weekend there and enjoyed the view and noise, specifically the tweets of all the birds at our window unaccompanied by rumble of vehicle motors.

In the center of the country, a steep road leads to Jerusalem, some 2000 feet above sea level, surrounded by mountain forests. Eastwards, the rolling hills of Judea and Samaria reflect a somewhat dry climate, green in the winter and brown in the summer but attractive in any case.

Traveling southwards, somewhere past Gadera, the Negev desert begins, reaching its arid peak at the Dead Sea. Yet, even here, the landscape is not uniform.  The northern part does receive some rain, creating incredible but short lived fields of flowers. The horizon is broken by protruding rocks, dry steam beds and crevices.  The closer to Eilat, the Southern tip of Israel, the drier and sandy the view becomes. However, at various oases, such as Ein Gedi, date palms flourish.

Of all the places I mentioned, the only real place you will find camels is in the Negev, where you can actually ride a camel, a surprisingly pleasant experience. That is why the Jerusalem camel is so absurd. On the other hand, a wooden rock hyrax, a much more common site, would be much harder to explain.

L’imparfait de subjective

Perfection is a concept that is useful for comparison but futile for satisfaction.  An example is the mythical concept of a perfect translation. Like Nadia Comaneci’s perfect 10, there is a belief that a flawless version in another language must exist. Alas, the path of improvement never ends. It is always possible to find a better word or phrase the sentence just a bit better.

The explanations for this inevitable failure to reach perfection in translation include the lack of skill by translators, the uneven quality of the original text and the nature of the improvements themselves. Depending on the case, any or all may be relevant. However, I see a bigger problem: Perfection in the case of translation is an impossible level to define and reach.

First, the ideal, the modal of perfection, is subjective. There many ways to translate a phrase. Each is different but each has its charm and strength. The assessment of better and worse quickly approaches the level of a matter of taste, referred to as preferential in the profession.  Pick up a few different translations of Don Quixote or War and Peace and compare. Can any specific one be qualified as the absolute transmission of the original?  The answer is explicitly negative as each translation both subtracts and adds to the original merely by the nature of target language.

However, even if the masterpiece did exist, few if any translators have the skill to reach that Mt. Olympus goal. Good translators have thorough knowledge of the target language, generally their native tongue, great familiarity with the target language and culture, two inseparable elements, impeccable work and quality control techniques and mastery of the technical means to apply all those. Clearly these skills are not incompatible with each other. Yet, few of us can honest claim to be experts in all. Most of strive for improvement to become solid and hope for excellence in one or more of those skills.

Assuming that the translator has these skills, one of the great difficulties of reaching perfection in anything is the lack of proper conditions. Most translators work at home, are female and freelancers. This means the translators have to balance many time demands, including cooking, cleaning, children, home repairs, friends calling and, last but not least, making a living. According to the 80/20 rule, the last 20% takes as much effort as the first 80%.  For an example, professional sprinters practice thousands or hours to reduce a tenth of a second from their time. So, in an ideal world, perfection is possible. Practically, there is a deadline for this project with more on the way.  Perfection is as far away as a week in Tahiti.

This leads to the fundamental conclusion, applicable to many fields besides translation. Perfection is not a required result in almost all cases.  In business, it is called good enough, a flexible term defined by customer needs and demands. A translation for internal consumption must be accurate and reflect the original; it does not have to be a masterpiece of literature.  It is generally clear a week later that the phrasing could have been improved here and there or another synonym would have been better. In practice, all the interesting parties were able to read the document painlessly and effectively and may even have not noticed the minor error. A webpage must be clean of all errors but does not have to be literature. Each case has its parameters.

That said, I do not intend to say that mediocrity is acceptable in anything. As the expression goes, anything worth doing is worth doing well. A mythical state of perfection spurs professional to strive and improve.  Yet, taken too far, the search for the ideal only frustrates people and makes them feel bad for no reason. The human language as the human body has countless forms, each with its own good and bad points. It is natural to strive to enhance the first and minimize the second. It is harmful to throw out the baby with the bath water, especially in reference to subjective concepts. It is the nature of the imparfait du subjunctive.

On the menu

It can be very adventurous, even romantic, ordering from a menu in a language you do not understand at all.  Unfortunately, the result can be a bit shocking unless you like lamb’s brain and Jerusalem artichoke paste or something too “exotic” for your tastes. On the other hand, to read a menu that is translated frequently results in releasing experience, specifically of tension, laughter or tears.

To explain, starting a restaurant is an expensive affair: kitchen, chefs, waiters, tables, environment, plates, silverware, fire and health licenses, to name a few.  Somewhere on the bottom of the list in most places, i.e. last and definitely least, is translation of the menu.  A Google search for “funny menu translations” will bring up countless outrageous dishes from China, Arab countries, Europe, except for America where restaurants generally don’t not even bother to translate as “everybody knows English.” Even in my little corner of the Galilee, there is a nice Arab restaurant whose Hebrew translation tells us they roast “Celebs”, which is supposed to be the Hebrew word for quail but misspelled, becomes much famous, or maybe infamous.

When faced with farcical translation, people’s reactions vary. The more pedantic inform the waiter of the error in question, ignoring the fact that the menu was printed three years ago. Those with poor sensitivity or high blood alcohol levels start laughing out loud, which is no more effective but does improve the atmosphere of the table. Professional translators start to carefully examine the menu to find more creative translations to tell their friends. As they say the more, the merrier.  The stilted diners notice and move on, completed unfazed by the fractured dish descriptions, like a cab driver noticing that a driver that failed to signal.  Chacun a son gout.

The interesting question is why menu translation is often so poor. Budget is one factor.  Many restaurants are shoe-string potato budgets. A lack of awareness of the tourist business is another factor. Many owners are unaware how many people do not understand the local lingo. There is also a common false impression that a cousin who got a high grade in English in high school can translate a menu just fine and, moreover, can be paid peanuts (or humus, fish and ships, or whatever the local cheap food is). The causes are numerous.

Regardless the reason, the all-too-common result is linguistic and culinary mayhem. The poor diner has to multitask, i.e., try to understand what is being offered while laughing, openly or not. In any case, it is not wise for a restaurant to be penny wise and pound foolish, spending a fortune on the menu and almost nothing on its translation. For the price you have to pay for the food, the least they can do is to properly inform you of what you are eating!