פעמיים כי לא טוב [poamim ke lo tov] Or Twice is not good

For airplanes and shuttles, redundancy is beneficial while for languages, it is traditional and mindless.  In other words, certain expressions are used without most people even considered the meaning of their individual parts.  If they did, they would understand that the second term adds no value.

Two classic legal examples are null and void and terms and conditions.  If an attorney wrote that the terms were null since they were unconstitutional, the meaning would be crystal clear with the exact same as when using the standard pairs.  Similarly, when receiving an order to cease and desist, it makes no difference whether you cease or desist.  Finally, there is the last will and testament, but either will arrange matters after your death.

Politicians are also guilty.  The Congress has the Ways and Means Committee, the Budget Committee in other words, in which it tries to find the way (or is that the means) of paying for a budget item.  Each and every citizen should be represented when either of them would include all Americans.

Even common folk are not completely innocent.  Keeping something under lock is no different than keeping it under lock and key since without the key, well, there may be a problem. Your feel just as uncomfortable feeling pins as it would be pins and needles.   Looking in every nook and cranny to find your glasses will lead to the exact same results as searching every nook or cranny.  Finally, if everybody and his third cousin know about it, so does everybody.

Sometimes there is logic to doubling up.  You need both nuts and bolts to attach something, even if the expression means the basic elements.  Likewise, when older people talk about aches and pains, there is a difference between them, mainly in terms of the duration and strength of the unpleasant feeling.

So, as in poker, doubling up can be tempting but may not be the right decision.  Think before you use a pair of synonymous words.

I would be interested in hearing if such useless pairs also exist in other languages.  Let me know.

Disappearing garbage

In my town in Israel and most towns worldwide, ten years ago, the husband (or other family member if he was not available) took out the garbage because, obviously, the garbage was full and possibly smelly.  Today, in Israel, without carrot or stick so to speak, garbage has shrunk to the point that the garbage bin smells long before it fills up. My main garbage bag in the kitchen contains what used to collect hourly in the small bag in the “triangle” by the sink.  In other words, at least in the house (but unfortunately not on television), we produce less and less refuse.

To explain, all large plastic bottles are put in a box to be transferred to recycling bins located in every neighborhood. Plastic wrapping and other food packaging goes to a recently introduced bin in our neighborhood recycling center.  We use the few plastic bags that we bring home, mainly when buying fruits and vegetables, for our cats’ waste. Glass and plastic beverage bottles are collected and brought to the supermarket for a rebate.  All paper, which my office produces too much of, is placed in a recycle bin in that same center.  Organic material without fat is put in our compost bin in our garden.  The neighborhood cats happily consume the chicken fat or bones, no waste there.  All that is left is the tissues consumed fighting my seasonal allergies and some scraps from the plates, which eventually create an unpleasant odor and have to be dumped.

In Israel, the placement of neighborhood recycling centers has quietly made this revolution possible without financial rewards, except in the case of beverage bottles, or penalties.  Admittedly, not everybody recycles but the sheer convenience of it gradually is bringing along, even the most insular families.  The proof is that the recycling bins fill up very quickly. In Los Angeles, the city provides three garbage bins, one each for household garbage, garden waste and recyclables, with the first being the smallest. In the West, garbage reduction has become necessary and possible.  Other cities set the garbage fee based on volume.  I am happy to admit that this is one culture change that I fully support.

I would be interested in hearing on how your locale is treating the issue.

House culture

A man’s (or a woman’s) house is his castle, or so they say.  It can also be his status symbol, social hall or just dormitory, all depending on the individual person and group culture.

The original expression in English means that the owner of the house may design and decorate the house as s/he pleases, of course as long it does not violate any housing codes or block any views of the neighbors.  This medieval law also allows you to refuse access to any person that you choose, especially salespersons, to the point of being able to shoot intruders in some countries and circumstances. Even the police technically have to attain a warrant to enter a house.  All that is missing is a moat.

In many countries, such as the United States and Israel, it is your statement of income.  Whether you have one bedroom or fifteen does matter in the eyes of society. It determines your social circle and basically announces your tax bracket.  Regardless of the formal price and currency, only the rich can afford a large estate with gardens and pools while only the poor stay in government housing projects, with the possible exception of the few remaining communist countries such as North Korean, where there is basically equality in poverty.

In the Mediterranean and other regions, the house is your social center.  Families and friends generally gather at their houses, not at restaurants.  In these places, houses and apartments are fairly big while restaurants are expensive relative to income.  For example, many Israeli families get together on Friday or Saturday nights around a nice meal, sun flower seeds and tea to share time together. The atmosphere and cost are truly family-friendly, better than any restaurant.

By contrast, in Paris and other large cities, where apartments are small, dark and expensive, the preferred meeting place is restaurants.  Likewise, in many parts of the United States, it is common for people not to invite people over as a matter of principle, as if your house was your castle against the world.  In this case, the house is a place to eat, sleep and watch television.  What counts is the noise level outside, distance from public transportation, available parking and proximity to shopping.  Granted, all those feature can cost quite a fortune in a city like New York, but still, the aesthetics of the location are much less important. The house is more a less an inflated dorm room, minus roommate.

So, your home is what you make of it or others make of it. Do not take it for granted.

Pesach is coming (run for your lives)

For Jews everywhere including in Israel, Pesach (Passover)  is a unifying holiday.  Jews of all strides celebrate it, from atheists to ultra-orthodox, albeit with significant differences of style and length.  As in most important events, the events with the most impact, at least emotionally, are before the actual occasion.  The week before Pesach is a curious play on the words said on Pesach eve: עבדים היינו [avadim hahnhnu] , once we were slaves:

Grocery store employees spend hours rearranging shelves and putting paper over the sections with foods that are  חמץ [hametz], forbidden to eat during Pesach.

Women spend a whole week doing a comprehensive spring cleaning of the house while trying to keep up on their other chores and of course, go to work.

Family members spend hours waiting in line in stores to buy the various items required for the Pesach meal.  The most dreaded sound is that last call on the morning of the Pesach when “she” suddenly remembers that some vital product is missing or discovers that she ran out of something. Husbands now have no excuses to postpone household repairs.  The dreaded day to tackle the long list of minor but time-consuming maintenance tasks has arrived.  Cleaning the house suddenly seems quite attractive.

The females have the standard issue of deciding and maybe purchasing new clothing for the holiday.  At least half of the population will understand how stressful that can be.  Religious Jews that can afford it buy clothes for the entire family.  Now that is an interesting family activity.

Generational arguments break out regarding the mythical quality of the grandmother’s cleaning and/or cooking, the choice to serve any of those ethnically-allowed foods such as rice and, often the most destructive, with whom the married son or daughter will spend the first night, with us or them, the in-laws (who have no idea how to properly make gefilte fish).

Everybody gets to complain about the weather.  If it is cold, it doesn’t feel like the spring.  If it rains, it makes it impossible to put the furniture in the garden when cleaning.  If it is windy, it redistributes the dust that you just supposedly cleaned.  If it is nice, you complain about what you would rather be doing on such a beautiful day.  Successful bitching is guaranteed.

The people working in retail not only put extra hours to meet the exaggerated demands of the Israeli consumer but are expected to prepare a proper Pesach and smile that evening.

Even those who are so fortunate to go to someone else’s house have the difficult task of finding an appropriate gift.  Of course, you cannot arrive with empty hands.  The pleasure begins even before you arrive because finding a parking spot at a shopping mall can be finding a needle in the haystack. Once you do, you have to think of a gift that the host does not have too many of already, would be appreciated and costs the appropriate amount. 

The fun reaches its peak in the hours before the Sedar.  The whole family gets to participate in the great shower wars, involving how much hot water each member of the family uses, obviously at the expense of the others.  Then, for those who are travelling, the whole happy family gets into the car and joins the countless others in a giant traffic jam, everybody hoping to the Sedar on time.

However, once the first cup of wine is drunk, all that is forgotten.  People smile and say חג שמח וכשר [hag sameach ve kasher], a happy and kosher holiday.  It was all worth it.

The Power of No

Americans live in a certain and stable world.  The United States has elections every four years, no more, no less.  The French have even more time to think, six years.  Israel is a dynamic country.  There is an election whenever the situation requires, generally around every two years.  That does not mean that the actual government changes.  In most cases, the Prime Minister remains the same but the actual coalition is adjusted a bit left or bit right, whatever that means.  The most curious aspect of the Israeli politics is that the best way of staying in power is to say “no”.

To demonstrate, the prime ministers with the most years in power in the history of Israel are Ben Gurion, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yitzhak Shamir.  David Ben Gurion, who ran the country for 14 years total, is the exception to the rule because he had two advantages. First, he did not have the luxury of doing nothing because the country had just been born.  Second, his Mapai party had a majority by itself and didn’t have to put together a coalition.

The current Prime Minister, Bibi as he is known, has held the position for nine years.  In terms of Israeli’s territorial security or chances for peace, basically nothing has changed in that period, for better or for worse.  There admittedly have a few short conflicts, but more in reaction than as a long term strategy.  The trading off of concessions to the Palestinians and those who want a greater present on the other side of the green line (hard to say that neutrally) has equally frustrated the Israeli left and right.  Combined with a sane but not proactive economic policy, Bibi has managed to survive nine years in the hot seat by avoiding extreme action in any direction.

Yitzhak Shamir, a prime minister for seven years, was less diplomatic than Bibi, but much more forceful in saying “No”.  He was also consistent, refusing any all suggestion for action.  Ask any Israeli what Shamir actually did.  The answer probably will be silence.  Curiously enough, he was rather well liked, a bit like Eisenhower, who was elected to do nothing and did not disappoint. 

The power of this “nothingness” is not a product of the ideal situation in Israel.  Israelis, who love to complain anyway, can produce a long list of problems, including the price of housing and taxes, to name just a few.  Instead, in my opinion, it is the result of living in an area of the world filled with peril.  Any action, however well-intended, may in fact lead to the destruction of the country.  So the country is split between the pessimists, who believe that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, and the half-pessimists, who look for signs that something can be changed and hope not to be disappointed.  If this split seems to lack any sense of ideology, I would tend to believe that level of optimism is a more relevant differential between the Israeli left and right.  In such a world, the famous dilemma from Waiting for Godot seems so relevant for many Israeli prime ministers: Should we go anywhere?

Less than an universal language

The pace of globalization, whether regarding products or language, is not uniform throughout the world.  As many American tourists have discovered to their frustration, not everybody speaks English, even in civilized in Europe.  For example, in Budapest, even though it is the capital city, many store employees do not understand or speak English.

This issue came up in a recent trademark dispute between the French Chronopost and DHL. One of the matters in dispute was whether the term webshipping would be understood by the French to imply delivery of products.  The judges ruled that while the term web clearly referred to the Internet, the average French speaker in 2000 would connect the word shipping to movement by ships, not to mailing products in general.  In other words, shipping was an exotic foreign word, not a description of services.

The question arises whether such a ruling would be issued in other countries.  For example, In Israel, where English instruction begins in 4^th grade, I strongly doubt it.  English is firmly ingrained in the daily language even in those less than successful in studies.  I suspect Germans would also have no problem understanding the term.  By contrast, it is possible that many native Spanish speakers, especially those in isolated areas in South America, would not know the meaning of the word.

The issue of the assumption of knowledge of a foreign language predates the Internet.  Tolstoy’s famous French dialogue in War and Peace was perfectly understandable to any pre-War World I Russian upper class individual, but significantly less those educated in the Soviet Era.  Thus, modern translations require explanation of the sentences in French.   Also, the time when a writer could quote Latin and be understood by the readers ended some 50 years ago.  However, there may be some English people educated in private schools that do understand them.  Then, there is the classic joke about David Levi, a former Israeli Foreign Minister who spoke French but not English.  Accordingly, it is told that he once returned an oven that he bought because it didn’t cook the of (chicken in Hebrew) when it turned in on off.   One can even argue the Internet language itself, so obvious to a certain generation, is still a foreign language to a significant percentage of the population.

I would be interested in hearing your impression of whether people where you live generally understand English.

Dubbed magic

As a translator of written texts, my main focus is the transfer on the content and style of the text to be translated into the equivalent in the target language, English in my case.  Watching the Hebrew-dubbed version of Mary Poppins, I was reminded of the lecture by Richael Glickman I heard at the recent ITA conference regarding dubbing of children’s shows. I watched the move in awe at the level of translation.

The translator/dubber succeeded in doing took things that I could never imagine impossible.  Not only did the translator express the idea but added two elements that involve the ear. The syllables /  speaking time in the Hebrew must closely match that of the English.  That equivalence is far from simple since English uses some 40-50% more words.  In other words, Hebrew translators actually have to add fillers to “complete” the text.  Moreover, the nature of the sounds as reflected by the form of the mouth, such an open “o” or closed “t”, must be the same.  So, even the words in Hebrew and English are parallel in terms of length, they may be inappropriate in terms of the video picture. If the character ends the song with a open mouth, you can’t have the localized version with a closed sound.  It simply looks funny.

As a demonstration, watch the youtube video of Spoonful of Sugar in several languages. In my opinion, the Danish was masterful but the Japanese dubber did not quite succeed.  As for the Hungarian, anybody that has ever heard Hungarian knows why the song was not even translated. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pih_f8GH31E)

So, if you wish to appreciate the art of dubbing, I strongly recommend looking at scenes from Mary Poppins or most Disney movies in Hebrew or most other languages.  Amazingly, it actually appears like the song was written in the target language.  That is truly seamless translation. 

*I would be interested in hearing about dubbing in other languages.