Hebrew legalities

As a professional legal translator, I often have to cite Israeli laws, specifically their name, articles or both. Just to make it clear, Google translate is of no use here in this language combination. The reason is that that certain idiosyncrasies typical of Hebrew affect some basic elements of the legal language and require some cross-cultural thinking in order to produce a proper translation

The first striking difference is the name of the law, specifically compound noun constructions. In English, if two nouns are joined together, the s for the plural is only added to the last noun, e.g., party conventions or Board of Director meetings. By contrast, Hebrew grammar allows either noun to be plural as relevant. Since a country can name its laws, including in English, in any way it wants, granted “informally”, the recognized English name of many Israeli laws sounds strange to English ears.  A few examples are the Companies Law and the Animals Manure Law. The translator is thus obliged to search, either through the Israeli Ministry of Justice or other site, and accept the recognized name, however awkward that may sound in English.

The name of the law is always followed by the year of its enactment, which presents its own issue.  In Israel, there are two calendars, the Hebrew, which is lunar based, and Gregorian, which is sun based. To make matters more interesting, the Hebrew year begins sometime in September or October on a varying basis. Accordingly, the name of the law in Hebrew notes both years, e.g. 5779 – 2019, in that order.  Having the identical ending digit is not automatic as a law passed between October and December could carry a Latin calendar year with final digit one less than the Hebrew one, admittedly a rare occurrence. The bigger problem in translation is what to do with the Hebrew year. Outside of Israel, nobody cares about the Hebrew year. Some translators insist on writing it, probably due to due diligence. I personally ignore it and only write the only one that a foreign audience will understand and need to know, the Gregorian one.

The numbering of articles and subsection within the law is a bit tricky due to Hebrew use of letters for numbers. To explain, each letter in Hebrew has a numerical value. The first nine letters are 1-9, the next nine digits are 20-90, etc. As an example, יד [yud-daled] is 14, i.e., ten and four. When a law in Hebrew has a short series of subsections, the first nine Hebrew letters, the translator has to choose which English equivalent to apply, letters or numbers. Is ד (daled] 4 or d?   Afterwards, it become easier to choose as the Hebrew will be marked as a number or letter, as in יד or נ [nun].  Generally, the letters are translated as letters but sometimes numbers may be used if lower level subsections exist, which require the use of the letters, i.e. Article 26(a) as compared to Article 26(1)(a).

Finally, the modal of legal necessity does not exist in Hebrew. English has an historical, albeit misused, word shall and a simplified modern word must to express the legal duty of a party. Hebrew uses the future tense in most cases. When translating statures, the translator must avoid the trap of maintaining the Hebrew structure and apply the English structure, i.e., the police must (shall) submit an indictment within 48 hours of arrest, not the police will submit an indictment within 48 hours of arrest. The future tense is a false friend in this case.

Thus, the job of a translator, legal and otherwise, is to transmit the words and culture of one language to another vocabulary and culture, not always a simple task. It is possible to disagree on the manner of doing it but all translators recognize its necessity. In legal translation, where precision and understanding are vital, the details make the translator.