In my last post, I touched on political correctness as looked at by someone living in Israel. I know that Israelis sometimes get our labels wrong but this is ridiculous.
A little sensitivity training, anyone?That was beyond a poor translation. Hat tip: (Zev)
You know who’s great at translating between English and Hebrew? (bad segue) My friend Martin “Mort” Rogovein, another Texan who’s lived here for a good fifteen years or so. For those of you in the Tel Aviv area, his a cappella group Chutzpah will be performing near Bazel tomorrow. They’ve been singing as a group for years now and are great. I expect to be there, feel free to stop by!
שישי ברחבת ג’אזלנד :
מופע חצוף במיוחד שיחמם את האוירה
בצהרי שישי הקרוב ה-29.1, בין 12:00
ל-13:00, תתקיים ברחבת חנות ג’אזלנד הופעה של הרכב אקפלה “חוצפה”. ההרכב יבצע אולדיז ג’אז וקטעים ישראלים.
מידע נוסף באתר של הלהקה http://www.chutzpahquartet.com/
Friday in the Jazzland courtyard
A Heartwarming performance full of chutzpah
Friday afternoon, 29.1 12:00-13:00
In front of the Jazzland shop a performance by the Chutzpah acapella group. The group will sing oldies, jazz, and Israeli music.
Unbelievable! I'm a little jealous that I didn't get to post that
Where did you find it?
It's next to the Mamila mall.
So I went to my handy-dandy dictionary and found this:
נכה – cripple, disabled, invalid
(we're so glad the translator chose the one he did, right?)
But just below that, with different vowel marks
נכה – deduct, discount
and just for fun, the phrase below that was:
נכה רוח – dejected.
However, I could see that it might be translated as "crippled spirit", right? Not "discounted spirit", or would that work, too?
(Good find, Zev!)
you know what's ridiculous about this sign is that I don't think the problem here is mistranslation so much as the guy doesn't actually know hebrew.
the sign is supposed to say "ma'Avar l'nache" – passage for disabled. I'm going to assume our genius thought the word was "me'Ever" in which case "beyond" is a fairly accurate translation. me'ever can be translated as beyond or across, as in me'ever l'yarden.. across the yarden.
incidentally abraham was called "avraham ha'ivri" from the same root because he came from across the other side of the jordan.
good story.
Nope, it's straight up Google Translate – I just tried it! Unreal.
Priceless. Thanks for the good laugh, B!
Why hasn't Lonny commented on this yet?
Beyond funny!
When you go to hear chutzpah tomorrow, request their bilingual rendition of Route 66.
I am waiting for the under disabled sign.
lol!! you should submit it to engrish.com
I recognize those steps! My family and I were strolling through the Mall (wife's idea) this past August and at the end we came to those stairs – about 20 of 'em! No ramp, no elevator…nothin'! Naturally, my not-quite two year old was asleep in his stroller.
I had a helluva time walking backwards up those stairs. Who the hell designed that mall!