לקראת (likrat)

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Dictionaries tend to favor the spatial definition of לקראת:  The Dvir dictionary says “to meet, towards,” and it mentions that the root is קרא (as in “Hey, you!”).  Sivan and Levenston’s Bantam dictionary also says “towards” but it adds the meanings “for” and “in view of,” taking into account that as the time of an occurrence approaches, it influences our behavior.  We might say we bought a new electric heater לקראת החורף  and mean that we bought it because winter was impending.  On the other hand, we might also say that לקראת החורף we bought a new electric toothbrush.

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Translatable But Debatable - The phrase לסגור חשבון (lisgor heshbon) and its component words

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Einat Schiff wrote an article for Walla! titled רשות השידור נגד קרן נויבך - ציניות מוחלטת על חשבון משלם המיסים and the Jerusalem Post referred to the article as “The IBA against Keren Neubach – total cynicism on the taxpayer’s account.”  No, that should be at the taxpayer’s expense.

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Translatable But Debatable - Livui ליווי

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What is the general term that would fit a guy whose function involves no hands-on participation, no hiring, firing, budget-making, imposition of schedules, or issuance of commands, and no PowerPoint presentations, but who nonetheless is supposed to be listened to seriously because he knows the stuff? 

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Translatable but Debatable: להפעיל (lhaf'il)

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What about the person whose task involves the הפעלה of other people?  You can run a department, but you can’t run a person, or someone else’s department, although in the spy movies you can run a secret agent in someone else’s country. 

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Translatable but Debatable: מסגרת (misgerret)

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In Hebrew, במסגרת functions rather like an everyday preposition that has nothing to do with a picture frame, a rim, or a visible border of any kind, whereas in English the word framework, being less common, does summon the image of a physical structure and the metaphor becomes irritating with repetition.

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Translatable but Debatable: זיקה (zika)

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“Meteors frequently fall to this earth during earthquakes,” remarked Charles Fort the great compiler of oddities, “but that may be only by coincidence, just as offsprings so often appear after marriage...” Hebrew provides a wondrously noncommittal word, זיקה, that Fort might have liked...

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Translatable but Debatable: שלום רב ("shalom rav")

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Like the quality of mercy, the quantity of hello isn’t strained.  That is, nobody forced the writer to choose the more formal, more expansive “shalom rav” rather than the everyday “shalom” so presumably there is an intentional difference worth translating.

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Translatable but Debatable: דווקא (davka)

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The word דווקא is post-Biblical, from the Aramaic.  If it were a Biblical word, it would be on every page of the Bible and King James would have been forced to deal with it.  “Hast thou davka eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?” 

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Translatable but Debatable: גיבוש, לגבש (gibush, l'gabesh)

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At the convention, when someone at the microphone remarked on the overuse of "crystallize" as a translation for gibush, a British-accented shout came from somewhere in the audience, “Formulate!” 

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Translatable but Debatable: מול (mool)

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I think that vis-à-vis often expresses מול better than any alternative would. Unfortunately, vis-à-vis is not an expression that endures repetition well. You can write מול five or six times on a page, but vis-à-vis that many times would look peculiar.

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Translatable but Debatable: מערך (maarach)

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A conscientious company had appointed a safety warden for each department, it considered them collectively a מערך in Hebrew, and it needed a translation. The dictionaries offer “disposition” and “formation,” but those words lean too much toward the positioning and not enough toward the people and their mission.

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Translatable but Debatable: גורם (gorem)

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I was in the office of a hi-tech CEO some time ago when a phone call came in from a vendor of translation software. The CEO listened only a few seconds before interrupting the vendor: “How does it translate הגורם המבצע?” he asked. I was impressed that he had such a challenge at the ready.

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Translatable but Debatable: ביצוע, לבצע (bitsua, l'vatsea)

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As the champion high-jumper clears the bar, the sportscaster cries out:  איזה ביצוע! — which is to say, what a thing-doing.  The English language has some theoretically fine translations for ביצוע, but connotations are a problem.  You could say what an accomplishment, but that would express the connotation that he did something difficult, not that he did it well or elegantly.  

This series of columns will be presenting one hard-to-translate Hebrew word at a time for discussion, and we’ll start with ביצוע (or לבצע).

You’re encouraged to add your comments at the end of the column, but please stick to the word currently under discussion.  One word will likely remind you of another, but if you’d like to discuss another word, please write to me at Elephant — whystyle@elephant.org.il — and I’ll present it with due credit in a future column.  That way, we can not only conduct a nicely focused discussion but also leave behind a useful archive for future reference, one word at a time.

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