2/11/01

Transmogrifilations

Our language provides unlimited opportunities for misuse, abuse, and amusement.

    In recent weeks this column dipped into my Old Green File for two pages full of weird-but-true snippets, davka ignoring the fact that the world was going to pieces.
    Turns out, lots of readers have their own OGFs, and they came up with enough good stuff for another page. (To answer your question, yes, I get paid the same even if others write the column for me.)
    The first caller was my mother. I consider her a good source, so this is undoubtedly true: she was watching a Western, I can't imagine why, and a coupla guys mosey over to the saloon. Drink?, one of 'em asks. Naw, the other says, I'm a teetotaler. Which was translated in the Hebrew caption as: "I'll have tea."
    You'll recall I invented a word for such transmogrified translations,  and Jonathan Stern of Wantagh, New York, was the first person in history to use it, comprehensibly and in context. He wrote: "Here's my favorite transmogrifilation story: When I attended Tel Aviv University in 1975 as an exchange student, the army sent two officers to speak about post-graduation opportunities. One student, a recent immigrant from the Soviet Union, was very interested in joining a 'yechida kravit.' He asked so many innocent questions that an officer asked if he actually knew what a yechida kravit was. The student replied that it was a unit karov to one's home. After much laughter, the second officer explained, in Russian, the difference between karov (near) and k'rav (fighting)."
    Jonathan also relayed a hot tip that could have saved America's alliance forces a lot of bother. He got this from his seven-year-old son Dov Alon who got it from a classmate who got it from an uncle who's in the IDF, which is another source I would never doubt: Osama bin Laden was spotted in Gilo. (Could be that's the guy we sold our apartment to when we moved out of the neighborhood.) So if the world alliance starts dropping all its bombs on GIlo, you'll know why.
    But then again, I've also heard reports that Elvis was seen in Gilo.
    L.A. of Baltimore, who is not my mother but I believe her anyway, says she was in a hotel restaurant in Acre, where she came across a dessert called Chocolate Corrosion. "We thought this might be some fascinating delicacy like one finds in the US, such as 'Death by Chocolate.' We inquired, only to find that it was a mistranslation: the intended meaning was 'Chocolate Croissant.'"
    Philippa Kushnir of Herzliya added a couple of menu mangles, for which this country is famous. On its list of liqueurs, a local restaurant committed 10 spelling mistakes in one word, rendering Cointreau as Quantro. And at Tel Aviv's Carlton Hotel, which should know better, Philippa was completely flummoxed by "Burley Cream" until she read the Hebrew, to understand it was meant to be "Creme Brulee."
    Like many respondents, Philippa took the opportunity to paste the Post for our own bungles. "What gets me," she says, "is that the TV programming in the JP is a translation [from English to Hebrew and back to English]... thereby causing many misunderstandings in the actual name of the program. The best one I ever came across was a film called The Curry Brothers" -- which is better known by its real name, The Krays.
    What if we made a mistake and no one noticed -- or cared? Plenty did, when we translated Ben Kisseh L'asor as "From Chair to Decade." (translate correctly). I think you should know, we don't tolerate mistakes; eight people were fired for that one.
    Hey, remember Mutiny on the Balcony? That was a good one.
    Sometimes we run corrections in the newspaper. They're actually meant to infer that the rest of the newspaper was correct.
    At least we don't make the same mistake every day, as one newspaper did in Canada. One of its readers pointed out that for more than half a century, the newspaper (whose name I've forgotten) misspelled its own name on the masthead, every single day. The newspaper had been using an old-fashioned, ornate font for its logo, in which a G was used instead of the appropriate C.
    (We'll always appreciate Canada for providing the all-time radio blooper, "This is the Canadian Broadcorping Castration.")
    Getting back to the subject. Yoram Ben-Menachem of New Orange, West Jersey, no, make that West Orange, New Jersey, relates that after the family was abroad for a few years, his son Tamir started Grade Two in Jerusalem, and had to revert from English to Hebrew. One day, his teacher asked him to explain the term "Luchot Habrit" (The Ten Commandments). When he couldn't, the teacher asked him to try it in English, which proved no trouble at all -- he responded: "the British boards."
    And this just in from Mark Weiss (check: 671-8039) of Jerusalem, one of the best menu mangles of all time: mistranslating kaved for kavod, a restaurant interpreted kaved off (chicken liver) as "Respected Chicken."
    Jerusalemite Pamela Loval, who I adore (her husband knows), gave me a clipping with this sentence: "Poleg beach ... will remain closed for the 10th season in a row as Health Ministry tests reveal high levels of hopes in the water." There's a typo here, but I can't figure out the intended word. I've narrowed it down to several possibilities: homes, holes, hoses, ropes, popes, dopes, neglect.

A FAMED French linguist -- well, not so famous that I actually recall his name -- is reputed to have said to his disciples on his death bed: "I am going to, or I am about to die; both are acceptable."
    In contrast to stating one thing in two different ways, the people who author road signs tend to state two different things in one way.
    SLOW MEN AT WORK was one mentioned by reader Laurence Silvera of Victoria, Canada; another in Australia read:
FALLING STONES
DO NOT STOP
    When I used to visit my Auntie Sarah ("the Tanteh from Taranteh"), I always felt a little sad to see that there were
SLOW
CHILDREN
IN DRIVEWAY
    On the other hand, I was grateful to see this one in London:
ROAD WORKS AHEAD
    Ronna Swartout, of Virginia Beach, beats 'em all with this one at a chicken diner in Norfolk, Virginia. It all depends on how you read it, across or down:
 DARK   MEAT
FAMILY  NIGHT
    Why go out when you can have a wonderful time at home, making faces at yourself? This, I presume, is the message of a furniture-store ad describing an "Entertainment Center" - and showing a picture of a mirror.
    Another ad reported by Ronna is for "prefab kit homes," which is only funny because it was placed directly over an ad for burial plots.
    (Which reminds me of a cherished item in my OGF: a full-page ad in the Jewish Chronicle promoting tourism to Israel. Under the words "Feel the warmth, share the joy," the photograph of Jerusalem depicts ... a cemetery.)
    The final contribution from Ronna is an eye-popper at a low-rent beauty salon: "FREE MAKEOVER WITH SPERM".
    I prefer to believe thatג€™s an errant S and that it really is a typo.
    Londoner Jeremy Rose wrote: "I attended a dinner for some Swedish Navy officers. The menu included the usual roast beef, served with green vegetables ... and 'Mashed Swedes.' " Wars have been waged over such things, so it was quickly explained to the guests that a ג€œswedeג€ is a rutabaga ג€“ which probably didnג€™t lessen their nationalistic pique.
    Jeremy had another dopy package warning to add to our collection -- on an American Airlines pack of peanuts: "May contain nuts." (Perhaps the same is true of the office where the packaging was produced.)
    An Australian-made ladder includes a warning that it should not be used by people who are "subject to painting spells."
    David Daniel, the only person we know from Allen, Texas, has a girlfriend. She has a curling iron, and it has a large warning label: "Do not use apparatus to curl eyelashes."
    Ouch!
    He bought an electrified fence "to keep my dogs in the yard through the not-so-subtle use of electricity." Guess what warning was printed on the product? Obviously -- "WARNING: May cause electric shock."
    Allen, Texas, has a McDonald's, the McDonald's has "Hot Apple Pie," and the pie has a label: "WARNING: Filling may be hot."
    David says that "We are not dealing with a lot of brain surgeons in the populace." But I think it's something else. There should be a label on America, "WARNING: Lawyers lurking everywhere."
    In America, you can suffer a twinge on the tip of your tongue from a Hot Apple Pie, and sue McDonald's for millions:
    "Your honor, my client suffered a conflagration to the external extremity of his lingual region upon consumption of Hot Apple Pie."
    "Was the Hot Apple Pie hot?"
    "It was, your honor."
    "Was there a warning label that said this Hot Apple Pie might be hot?"
    "There might have been, but the rest of the package melted."