Work-life balance – The Melo example

 

[Magic Johnson*]

I have always read the “Sports” section first, whether of the morning newspaper of my youth or the websiteד of these years. I really enjoy seeing my favorite teams win, which they unfortunately only do occasionally, but I am not overly upset if they lose because sport is only a game. This week, an article posted in Yahoo Sports discussed LaMelo Ball, the rookie guard for the Charlotte Hornets of the NBA, for those not in the know, like me [link]. The gist of the article is that he is having a fantastic season, is incredibly talented and looks like he is having the time of his life playing basketball. Furthermore, he is as successful and happy as he is specifically because he treats basketball, i.e., his career and livelihood, as a sport only. In other words, he strives to be successful and make lots of money but knows that the real life is elsewhere, quite a bit of wisdom for someone only 19 years old. His successful approach is also relevant to non-NBA basketball players and older folk in terms of commitment, attitude and perspective.

It is clear that there is a strong correlation between success and effort. The more time and effort you invest in your profession, the more skillful and profitable you will become. As I heard in a recent webinar by Corinne McKay, she set a specific financial goal, a rather high one at that, and then sought and found the manner to attain it. To stand above the rest, it is necessary to consider a strategy and then apply it with discipline. In other words, to be a professional, you have to act like a professional, whether you are an NBA star and a freelancer. Commitment is a key.

The “secret sauce” of success is enthusiasm. People are instinctively attracted by positive energy, a factor much easier to identify than skill. Professionals that broadcast the image that they enjoy their work are simply more successful in engaging customers and colleagues, creating a form of synergy. By contrast, unless due to inertia or forced by a lack of choice, we avoid people that hate their job. Therefore, it is vital in invest your person in your job to succeed.

Yet, even our careers, our livelihoods, are essentially a game. Most people want to succeed, be promoted and make more money. Yet, regardless of their achievements in those areas, happiness is fundamentally derived from internal tranquility, friends and family. In other words, the correlation between income and happiness is fundamentally low, removing the outliers such as homelessness and lack of food. How many people found themselves renewed and happier as a result of the Corona crisis, which upturned the professional paths of countless people? Ideally, work is a serious game but only a game.

I admired the skill and dedication of Kobe Bryant whose drive to be the best was unchallenged but believe that his approach is not practical, relevant or even healthy for the vast majority of people. By contrast, Magic Johnson (of my time) and LaMelo Ball were and are must- sees, as the article states, not only because of their skill but also because of their approach. It is desirable and possible for any person, great or small, to invest in and enjoy their work and still lead a balanced life by remembering that, as the Israeli singer Dafna Dekel sang in the 1992 Eurovision contest, זה רק ספורט [ze rak sport], it is only sport.

* Help the blind access the Internet by inserting picture captions.

Prostituting words in English, French and Hebrew

 

[All pictures in this post are of various sex industry workers*]

There is an old joke about a discussion between a prostitute, engineer and lawyer regarding what the oldest profession is. The prostitute begins by stating the obvious, namely, that as long as there has been human civilization, there have been prostitutes. The engineer then mentions the biblical story of creation, which is in fact engineering. The lawyer then trumps [as in cards] everybody by reminding everybody that before there was creation, there was chaos, his contribution. Today’s post relates to the youngest of the three, prostitution, a word derived from Latin and originally meaning exposing yourself to the public. As this is a taboo topic in most societies, many code words exist for the women employed in it. While it is almost impossible to relate all the terms, with English alone having more than 60 words or phrases, probably because you are not supposed to talk about sex, languages approach this not-so-noble profession in many ways, including the time and place of its activity, the purpose and manner of its activity and positive and negative attitude about its morals.

A practical approach to nomenclature is to relate to the when and where of prostitution. An English lady of the night would be a French belle-de-jour and belle-de-nuit, depending on the shift, while Hebrew יַצְאָנִית [yatzanit], derived from to leave, emphasizes that these girls leave their houses, especially at night, an audacious act for females then and even now in some places. Their place of work is the street as reflected in the English word streetwalker and French asphalteuse and pierreuse. These words may not be compliments but do describe facts.

These women are in fact trying to make a living by attracting customers as recognized by other terms. The English term working woman, the French gagneuse and Hebrew זונה [zona] all relate to making a living or bringing home the bread as in the last term. They do so by attracting their customers by being a hooker, a word made famous by General Hooker of American Civil War fame and his soldiers, being available as a call girl or even providing an escort, or as the French would say, just being a sirène, as in those entrancing ladies made famous by Homer. It may be not be a noble profession but it is a business.

Some cultures had respectful words for the profession but some soured over time. The French once called them girls, putains, but that word lost all of its shine. Fortunately, they have positive terms, including fille de joie and femme galante, meaning a woman of joy and a gallant woman. The English terms whore and tart originally meant someone that enjoys and a sweetheart, respectively, but, alas, these lost their status a long time ago. As for the Hebrew, גַּחְבָּה [gachba] and נַפְקָנִית [nefkanit] are both derived from producing, pleasure presumedly. On a positive note, the Japanese language has a respected place for these women, a bit like the official mistresses of the last French kings, referring to them as courtesans and geishas.  

However, the vast majority of morally defining terms are negative, emphasizing the light morals of these women. The English have called them loose women, floozies and scarlets, depending on the period. Less tolerant French would call one une fille lègére, a “light” girl, not referring to her weight. Hebrew identifies their broken values in the word פְּרוּצָה [prutza], relating to broken, and שַרְמוּטָה [sharmuta], the last derived from Arabic. Clearly, most of the morally-charged terms for prostitutes are negative.

This list of nomenclature is just a sampling. However, the sheer number of terms and their wide variety of approach show how prevalent and successful the third youngest profession is as well as the spectrum of perspectives in regards to its existence. As for any phenomenon, whether constructive or destructive, the importance of a concept can be ascertained by the number of words describing it. By that standard, the other two ancient professions have been far less successful.

* Captions on pictures are just one easy way to help the blind. All pictures are from Pixibay.

Giant steps – Head in the clouds and feet on the ground – the 2021 Online Conference of the Israel Translators Association (ITA)

 

[Winston Churchill*]

One of the purposes of any professional conference is to get people to dream while showing them how to make the dream a reality. In that sense, the 2021 ITA conference was a great success. Spread over three days from March 1-3, the attendees profited from the variety of visions in regards to translation and its significance as well as practical steps for success in these challenging times. When the lecturers speak with enthusiasm and authenticity, it is the icing on the cake. I would like to present my personal highlights (with apologies to those speakers I do not mention).

Starting with Yves Champollion, we were taken to the start of the modern translation, the process of the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone, which exemplifies the required skills and challenges of today. Later that day, Douglass Hofstader discussed the relative merits of transposing contextual language, whether description or dialogue, from one culture to another, citing the translations of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and David Grossman’s A Horse Walks into a Bar, among others.  He discussed the degree to which the readers’ culture should be reflected in the choice of words. The next day, Prof. Yehuda Shenhav-Shahraban spoke about the problem with translating from a language without solid knowledge of its culture and how working in groups, i.e., through dialogue, can overcome this limitation. Later that day, David Chrystal took us on a rapid and fascinating trip through the history of linguistics, a challenge in itself, and enlightened us on its latest focus, pragmatics, crystallizing (pun intended) our intuitive knowledge that context is almost everything in determining the actual meaning.  Fabienne Bergmann and Eliezer Nowodworsky discussed the problem of censorship even when the translation is clear, using the Little Prince as an example. These lectures brought out the extasy of translating a word.

No less importantly, other lectures provided guidance for business success in the changing world translation. Regardless of your current specialization or future area of growth, lecturers provided a gold mine of information. Nina Sattler-Hovdar broke down the ins and outs of transcreation while Joseph Kovalov demystified machine translation. Michel Norman shared his wealth of knowledge on financial translation, which I personally profited from, while Maria Victoria Tuya provided a detailed presentation on medical translation. Paige Dygert gave excellent advice on why and how to find legal clients while the challenges of remote interpretation were addressed by several speakers, including Francesco Saina as well as Myriam Nahon and Gisèle Abazon of the AIIC. I personally led a discussion on communicating with customers when problems occur for the purpose of both limiting damage and building customer loyalty. The conference provided plentiful practical tips.

Maybe the most valuable  contribution of this conference was the inspiration and hope it gave after this last difficult year. Anna Lewoc presented the why and how to achieve the proper balance between work and happiness, an art that especially tends to be lost in tough times. Armenise Guiseppe Alessio spoke with enthusiasm and specific about how he succeeded in starting a freelance translator business in the middle of the Corona crisis. Finally, and most inspiring, Marguerite Strom showed how us how she reinvented her business in that period, overcoming all the psychological barriers, including being non-native to technology and uncomfortable with marketing, and is thriving. She especially cheered up those generalists, who have been feeling underappreciated  in  recent years. Whether we are new or established, their messages rang a bell.

The best testimony of this conference is that I was able to sit on my sofa for three days without suffering, an abnormal act if I  am healthy. The combination of relevant topics and effective speakers made it easy to do nothing but listen and learn. The ITA chairperson, Uri Bruck, deserves a whole haberdashery of chapeaux for the organization of the conference and keeping it on schedule. Churchill said that if you are going through hell, keep on going. This conference was a giant step to better times.

*Use  picture captions to assist the blind. 

Picture credit: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/openclipart-vectors-30363/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=1299836">OpenClipart-Vectors</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=1299836">Pixabay</a>