Dance accounting – Karmiel Dance Festival 2019

The Karmiel Dance Festival has come and gone. I was able to attend two performances, one being a potpourri of international troupes, whose actual names we were never mentioned. They came from Mexico, Brazil, Serbia, Turkey, Russian and China (as well a local group of Yemenite dancers). Each performed two dances. Like all good smorgasbords, while all came were good, I did not enjoy each one equally. The interesting aspect, in retrospect, is the reasons for my preferences.

The groups from Mexico and Brazil both performed long couple suites. The costumes were colorful and flowing while the music had a nice dancing pace. However, the dancers from Mexico were energetic and enthusiastic. Their faces expressed the joy they felt in dancing.  Couple dancing is fundamentally erotic foreplay.  In their case, I could imagine them celebrating the dance in private. By contrast, the Brazilian group seemed distant from the audience and each other, with a few exceptions.  In my mind, good dancing goes beyond technical skill and must involve getting into the spirit of the music.

Two Balkan (in the dance meaning of the word) dance groups appeared. As I have been dancing such dances for over 40 years, I can say that the Serbian and Turkish troupes were both very authentic in both costumes and style. Regarding the latter, the steps are small, precise and often quite quick, which is deceiving simple to execute. Yet, I had a strong preference for the Serbian group as their dancing felt as if it was genuinely being done in a small village by people who know each other and enjoy each other’s company. By contrast, the Turkish dance, whether because I am not fond of the sounds of traditional Turkish instruments or the steps are so understated, seemed flat and out of context to me. Traditional folk dancing is a social act, like going on a walk with friends, and should express that context.

The Chinese and Russian troupes were more theatrical and performed more choreographed and sophisticated dances. They were both quite skillful whether in terms of the ability to jump, float around the stage or control their hand movements. Still, I enjoyed the Chinese more than the Russian. The reason may be that it was more novel to me, never having really seen Chinese dance before, but I also enjoyed the image being represented, life in the spring, I think. Between the costumes and the movement, it took me away in some manner. The Russian dances involved the standard songs and steps made famous by the Red Army Orchestra.  The steps involve primarily physical skill but seem, maybe unfairly, a cliché. In my eyes, performance dancing must somehow open our eyes to something new.

None of the performances were poor.  Yet, I preferred those that expressed a spirit, context or idea. As they say in Hebrew, על טעם וריח אין להתווכח  [Al ta’am vereah ain lehitvakei’ah], which means you can’t argue with taste and smell, or French, chacun à son gout; in short, in dancing, there is no accounting for taste, even if I try to understand my own.

Beyond words

There is a perception that translation and interpretation are matters of word knowledge, i.e., the person must have a rich vocabulary. While that is true, what is no less required is the understanding of context. Regardless of how many meanings of a word translators may know, unless they identify and apply the correct context, their work is poor.

This message was reinforced by the lectures given at the Lecture Day organized by the Israel Translators Association this week in Kfar Hamaccabiah in Tel Aviv. The lecturers, including myself, discussed a wide variety of issues but all emphasized the importance of grasping the context and applying it to the word choice. (https://ita.org.il/?page_id=2718&lang=en)

For example, the opening speaker, Dr. Gabriel Birnbaum, recounted the history of the Language Academy’s Historical Dictionary and noted that the first some 30 years were dedicated solely to collecting and entering source material so that all of the uses of a word could be defined.  Not only that, this collection process is still continuing and now involves more recent material from the 19^th and 20^th century.

Likewise, Ms. Shira Schmidt raised the difficult question of how to translate words linked to a very specific culture such that anybody could understand it. The context was the subtitles to a movie on an ultraorthodox marriage that mentioned words such as rogolach, tchulent and muselman. A non-Jew would have no idea what they meant.  She stressed that the main consideration is the depth of understanding that is required to understand the film. In other words, you can fudge the meaning if it really makes no difference and use a general term even if it is not specific enough.

Ms. Yael Valier, an experienced translator of children’s books from Hebrew to English, brought into the focus the requirement to ask questions about the targeted market before beginning the translation.  Specifically, the person has to know whether the publishers wants a modern style a book, a “vintage” look or an activity book, to name a few types. Regardless of how good the translation, if it does not match the purpose, it will not be accepted.

On the same theme, Ms. Tzviya Macleod broke down the US children’s book market and strongly emphasized that it is formally segmented with strict requirements, unlike the Israeli one. Thus, books that rhyme and those that fail to meet word count and style requirements have almost no chance of being accepted.

The last lecturer was Mr. Dory Manor, who “ruminated” on translating poetry. With a wealth of experience in the field, he illustrated how subjective the term “good translation” is in regards to poems and more importantly, how subjective the readers’ knowledge of symbols and precedents is. Thus, with great trepidation, in some cases he would substitute Jewish symbols for Christian and even Greek mythological ones to allow his reader to understand the meaning of the poem. When in Rome, translate for the Romans, as they say.

If in physics, as Einstein said, all is relative, so it is translation. The choice of words is strongly related to the context of the phrase, raising the profession from a science to an art. Like any writer, the translator or interpreter must go beyond words.