Reading Between the Lines: and languages Soon after I arrived in the Dover Tzahal unit of the IDF, I began browsing the army's online historical archives. The Dover Tzahal is the Spokesperson Unit, essentially responsible for army PR. One of Dover Tzahal’s responsibilities is to maintain the IDF website, which is written in both English and Hebrew, features news updates and cutesy human interest stories, and a reliable weekly declaration that we will protect the State of Israel, given by Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi. With a bit of browsing, you’ll also find that the IDF has historical archives, which are basically summaries of historical events that have taken place since just before Israel’s declaration of statehood in 1948.

As a native English speaker who is also proficient in Hebrew, I was wide-eyed with both shock and disgust as I began to explore what struck me as an historically inaccurate, grammatically incorrect massacre of supposed facts. The archives weren’t manipulative or skewed in one way or another; they simply didn’t make sense. After a bit of investigation, I discovered that this mess was a result of translations by native English speakers who lacked sufficient historic knowledge and Hebrew language skills. They had been forced to translate the archives from Hebrew to English within a couple of days, an order that was given by (what I’m generous in calling) an incompetent officer that, thankfully, is no longer anywhere to be found in Dover Tzahal.  With my sincere interest in history, the written word, and the historical and political image of Israel, I requested the responsibility of editing the archives. Since then, the task has been officially delegated to me just as I’d so desperately wanted—and yet, I feel cursed.

I’ve spent the last several years of my life playing catch-up after being raised in an assimilated family and having attended public schools that glossed over the history of the Middle East and Israel, in particular. At this point, I consider myself to be more than generally knowledgeable about the topics of Jewish, Zionist, and Israeli history along with contemporary affairs, and so I’d simply assumed that editing the historical archives would be somewhat effortless and maybe even fun. I was wrong.

My difficulties are completely unrelated to historical accuracy; I can easily read one paragraph at a time and alter what is not correct, verify facts with credible sources and make certain that the information is solid. The major issue, which impedes the process most of the time, is word choice. For example, there are no generally accepted definitions of a terrorist, a Palestinian, a defensive operation, a massacre, an arrest, or any other term that is essential in describing Israel’s past. I’d become accustomed to using these words in a way that coincided with my understanding of these loaded terms and phrases. Now, however, I’m not speaking for myself, my education, my personal bibliography, or my group of likeminded friends—I am speaking for the IDF, and thus, in some ways, I am speaking for Israel.

Israel critics would have difficulty finding historical inaccuracies or biased terms in the IDF historical archives that are written in Hebrew. That said, the country also needs to express its political actions and ideals as fairly and articulately as possible in English—its second language. For example, in Hebrew, the word piguah refers to an attack. It does not strictly refer to acts of terrorism, but most English-speaking immigrants in this country—the ones that do all of the translating for the IDF—only hear this word in that particular context. If there was a piguah, in all likelihood, a suicide bomber has attacked. Linguistically, however, the word could refer to any type of attack, even a justified counter-attack, and certainly any number of attacks that are not politically motivated. It isn't easy to find translators whose understanding of the cultural and linguistic connotations of the sensitive words used to describe Israel’s “official stance" is deep enough to be published and disseminated, especially considering that they are the very translations taught in classrooms, aired on the news, and influencing voters and policy makers, everywhere.

Most people don’t have a reason to read the IDF website, especially when it comes to the online historical archives. That thought in particular has reduced some of the stress associated with editing the archives, but my general understanding of both the fate of all that is written and the ideological conflict that surrounds the State of Israel, regardless of what it or its supporters do, makes this endeavor nearly impossible. My understanding is that even if the overwhelming majority of people rely on other news sources, books, academic journals, and credible professors for their information, one thing is certain: those looking at the IDF with negative, preconceived notions about our military history and our interpretation of it will read the IDF historical archives, and they will, however unfairly, use our website to conjure up arguments that could falsely represent the position of the IDF and thus fuel the opposition in the ideological war that Israel is, and always has been, fighting.

I know that the IDF archives are misleading due to bad translations, but to most others, they are simply a representation of the IDF and its official stance regarding controversial, historical events. In Israel, we do not have the luxury of overlooking typographical errors, misquotes, or numerical mishaps. Everything associated with this country—every military operation, every sentence written in any publication, the general justification of our existence—is scrutinized in an aggressive way that no other sovereign state has had to contend with.

I see no need to embellish or to leave any portion of our narrative untold, but it's a challenge to make certain that the language coincides with the truth, both in the context of the archives and out of context. For now, I’ll continue to research both Israeli policy and international law in order to best define some of these terms. I'll strive to choose words that speak the completest truth possible, and that serve to further the understanding of our people’s national experiment.

Cunning Linguists: That's "cunning Yiddish linguist" to you.This week, some interesting ideas were raised and discussed in the comments section of Matthue Roth's post which gave us a round-up of Limmud UK. In the post, Roth writes, "Former Speaker of the Knesset Avrum Berg's assertion, while reading I.B. Singer's Nobel address, that Yiddish is a language without words for violence. That, he says, should be our model for building a Jewish state and a model for its future -- with all the corollaries that come with that. (After our session, I pointed out to him that one of the first Yiddish phrases I learned was potch in the tuchus. He said it didn't count.)"

Out of the six that were posted in response to Roth as of this late hour I'm writing, the comment that really stuck out to me was Portnoy's original comment, the very first comment, a comment in direct response to this particular item on Roth's bullet-pointed Limmud UK summary list. Portnoy wrote:

"This is a load of crap. Yiddish has numerous words and expressions for violence which range from the ever-mild barnes (noogies) to aroysnemen a mashkante af emetsn (to hold someone down and beat the shit out of them, - literally, to take out a mortgage on someone), not to mention all the variants that deal with nase arbet (murder, or, literally, wet-work). The notion that Yiddish doesn't have words for violence is also illogical, since as the victims of violence Yiddish speakers would, at least, have words for what was done to them. But Yiddish speakers also did unto others as was done unto them and a significant lexicon exists for it. Just because milquetoasty Avrum Burg is a frayer for buying into the fantasy that Yiddish speakers are passive, doesn't mean you have to be. His comment may be a nice platitude, but it's not based in reality. It's Yiddish disinformation."

Yiddish social-lingual structures and dynamics? Yes please. The lingual nerd in me enjoyed this comment immensely, to be sure, as it conjured up all sorts of linguistic essays I've long wanted to delve into writing (or try writing, in any case). But surely such rumors, extracted from either nothing or from tiny threads of misunderstanding, surely they exist around other languages, too? You bet. Like the notion that the Irish have no word for sex (Hat tip to Tamar for uncovering this fabulous article that only gets better and better as it continues.) and the many other fascinating articles (if you geek out on such things, too) on Language Log like John McCain's assertion that Eskimos have no word for robins, or the 46 Somali Words for Camel-- which includes this beautiful line about assumptions, "...hackneyed rhetoric and banality of thought... the unmotivated assumption that cultural interest always translates instantly into multiplication of vocabulary..." Not that that line as anything to do, per se, with the comment of the week, my original jumping off point, but it's a good line in any case. On that same thread, please let the record show that I can't actually decide if I love "Yiddish misinformation" or "milquetoasty Avrum Burg" better.

My own heritage is British Guyanese: my mother left Guyana just after it gained independence. If there is one thing I know about Guyana is that the people there have a word for everything. I had to call my mother and get the linguistics lesson.  If your background is Black and Portuguese there’s a word for it: "santantone" (which actually refers to San Antonio – a slave ship stopover point).