Israel News Insights - Now on Elephant
We’ve added the Israel News Insights to Elephant. This is a twice-weekly newsletter with updates on the situation in Israel and the effects of Oct. 7 worldwide. For those who want to receive the newsletter directly into their mailbox, you can subscribe at http://eepurl.com/iFphtI .
This week we've decided to focus on two developing spy scandals in Israel. While we don't yet know whether they would make for good spy novels or comedy routines - they are both real and serious. The first one, which began appearing in the Israeli news a few weeks ago, concerns Israelis that Iran succeeded in getting to betray Israel in return for money. So far, none of the spies uncovered were high level or well connected, but there are signs of a massive effort by Iran to entice Israelis - often using fake profiles in social media or criminal contacts.
Over the past week Bibi and Biden appear to have joined forces against Israel’s opposition parties, each for their own reasons. While Biden may not like Bibi, and Bibi may be rooting for Trump - this week’s events have shown that politics can indeed create strange bedfellows. In this issue, we will look at the three most important issues facing Israel this week and explain how U.S. President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister have found themselves working hand-in-hand against the Israel’s opposition parties in order to advance the political interests of the Biden-Harris administration on one hand and of Bibi and his extremist coalition on the other.
“Kul kalb biji yomo” in Arabic means every dog shall have its day; in other words, every bad person shall get their punishment eventually (sorry dogs for dragging you into this…).
And that’s exactly what happened to Yahya Sinwar, the chief architect of the October 7 massacre and the country's most wanted man. Sinwar disappeared at the start of the war triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attacks, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
And now, he’s finally dead, killed in the ruins of the houses above the tunnels he used to hold the hostages and to plan his attack on Israel. Sinwar was killed in a chance encounter with Israeli troops operating in south Gaza’s Rafah on Wednesday.
In today’s issue, we will focus on the aftermath of Sinwar’s death, and what it means for the hostages and the future of the war.
Time for New Leadership - Call for Volunteers
It is time for a new leadership to replace me. In addition to the great work that Mark Levinson is doing, we have a new volunteer, Eitan Greenberg, who will manage the Event and Course Calendars. There is definitely a demand for meetings (any volunteers to start organizing them?) We also need a volunteer to take over the Job Opps section and post jobs (with preference for listings with salary information and jobs from the actual employer/customer and not intermediaries).
Translation, proofreading and writing organizations/mailing lists that would like write permissions to use elephant.org.il as a resource to promote their events should contact me directly.
Cover credits for translators?
Should a translated book name the translator on the cover? If you something to say about it, join the discussion here.
Building a megalist of translators/editors
The folks over at CIWI are attempting to build a comprehensive list of translators of all stripes, as well as editors and copywriters working in Israel. It’s being maintained on a Google Sheet and anyone is free to write/edit/comment. Link here. It will be a great resource for anyone looking to hire someone quickly. Share widely.
A slangy way of translating nim’as li uses“over,” as in “I’m so over this place” and “I’m over your patronizing tone, okay?” I think that’s a recent usage; I don’t remember it from when I was young. And speaking of getting old, “getting old” is another way of saying nim’as about something.
“Netanyahu hasn’t learned the lesson of five months ago, that drinking up too many of his so-called natural partners’ votes can hurt him,” said a Jerusalem Post article. But there’s a better expression in English, and it’s been in use since well before this election year. “Ralph Nader was siphoning votes from Gore,” a 2004 book by William Saletan notes.
The dictionaries have more to say about translating hekel as applied to a problem — alleviate, mitigate, palliate, etc. — than as applied to the person who has the problem. If you find a software program complicated to use, and the company supplies shortcuts to reduce that difficulty, then actually none of the dictionary definitions of hekel can describe what the shortcuts do for you.
Yeshayahu Ben-Porat’s book about the Yom Kippur War, called HaMekhdal in Hebrew, was published in English translation under the title Kippur. English-language journalists and scholars never did come up with a thorough consensus on what to call the Mekhdal, and sometimes we see it transliterated from Hebrew and glossed in English.
Morfix defines hitlabet as “to have doubts, to be uncertain, to weigh possibilities; to think over, to deliberate, to ponder, to mull, to debate.” Still I think of the meaning as commonly more specific than that. When I leave the house, it’s not so much that I mitlabet about whether I fed the goldfish. I mitlabet about whether or not to go back.
Young animators bring Israeli animation to a new level!
The Fenesta Family is a high quality animation series created by group of young Israeli animators with the support and help of the Kan Digital incubator. With only the first two episodes out, the series has already gone viral.
Animation is a time consuming art, especially when done at the level of this series. In my opinion, they have brought Israeli animation to world class level. Hopefully this is only the beginning. In Israel the Kan Digital link is recommended. Outside of Israel you may need to find the episode on facebook.
For Hebrew speakers read
Jennifer Croft, who translated Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk from Ukrainian, has announced that next time if her name won’t be on the cover, she won’t be translating. And together with novelist Mark Haddon, she started a petition. Columnist Pamela Paul believes that better visibility for translators can also lead to better pay.