Tuesday, March 20, 2007

First of all look at today's dilbert to gain some real perspective.
He's been waxing philosophical recently. Yesterday's was also spot on.

One of my children took Huckleberry Finn out of the library in Hebrew. I told her she couldn't read it.
There is just no possible way that Hebrew can do justice to Mark Twain. I read the first paragraph out loud in both Hebrew and English and the translation was worse then laughable. This is the first paragraph from the original
" YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before."
It's like trying to translate Uncle Remus into Hebrew, you lose 99% of the book because there are no words in Hebrew corresponding to the lack of good English that they use.

Maybe Harry Potter can be translated, but whoever even thought about translating anything that Mark Twain ever wrote should be hung from the nearest tree. That is just pure vandalism. I'm trying to get my eldest to read more in English now. We are slowly learning it together and she's making good progress. Number 2 just started lower case letters and numbers 3,4 and 5 have to learn to read in Hebrew before I will start them on English.

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