When Harry met Gili

You have to take your hat off to her. Gili Bar-Hillel is the translator of the Harry Potter books into Hebrew. I still find it hard to get my head around – the language of the Torah and Prophets in Hogwart’s Academy. It is a real case of the sublime describing the ridiculous.

Bar-Hillel comes from a line of intellectual heavyweights. Her grandfather was a Viennese Philosopher, her parent’s lectured at the Hebrew University in Psychology. She has three degrees herself, including one from Harvard.

Evidently she has had huge translation challenges and is bombarded with letters from the kids reading the Hebrew version. One complained that Harry ate bacon (she wrote back explaining the difference in cultures). Then she has to figure out what words to use for “wand” or “prefect”, both of which are unknown concepts in Hebrew culture.

Good luck. I bet she’s glad that Ms Rowling has hung up her broomstick!

Colour my world

For part of my course I have an assignment on colour. It is huge and threatens to take over my life. We haven’t officially started this component yet, but I decided to get ahead and do as much research as possible before the paint bucket hit the fan.

Colour is highly associative for me. Orange = flavoured Smarties, Red = Dad’s rose garden, Yellow = daffodils on the York City walls, White = my ballet tutu when I was 4, Ginger = the cat I had for 12 years, Pink = the walls in my bedroom when I was 8, Lilac = grandpa’s sweet peas, Brown, the paint I insisted on for my bedroom ceiling when I was 13, Burgundy = my first ball gown. Black, not officially a colour, only reminds me of mourning or abayas in the Muslim world. I was horrified to see it is the official sartorial colour of choice in my adopted country. Sooooo depressing!

I have observed that women have a huge vocabulary for colours. They don’t just say “Brown”, they’ll say Mushroom/Cocoa/Rust; “Red” is Wine/Pillarbox/Jewel/Flame/Ruby, “Blue” is Cornflower/Air Force/Powder/Royal/Sapphire.

Blokes will tend to say “Yellow” and not refer to Custard/Mellow/Daffodil/Pumpkin.

Colour is a great way to get verbally creative. The collocations are infinite. Anyone remember Carnaby Pink? I had a lipstick this colour which I think I inherited from an older cousin when I was 6. I was in seventh heaven as I wore it with dressing up clothes.

Any funny colour memories out there?

Catch me if you can

Yesterday was the half yearly visit to the vet for our soppy tom cat. He is known to be the best solar panel in the S. Hemisphere. If there is a drip of sunlight anywhere, Otto can be guaranteed to be sponging it up.

Small problem, he has a pink nose. He is vulnerable to skin cancer like the rest of us down here where there is so little Ozone. So, from now on, I have to apply suncream to his tiny pink nose.

He’s going to hate me. He will sulk, he will run. I will be persona non grata. I can’t bear it – he’s my baby and I won’t be able to explain why he has cream up his nostrils.
He is the most good natured cat I have ever owned. Yesterday the vet had to put her fingers over said nose to stop him purring whilst he was having his chest sounded. I am just hoping that the kitty kvell (Yiddish for purr) doesn’t stop when he is sporting factor 30.

Out of the Stone Age

We are on broadband! My life has been revolutionised. But boy, the grief my husband had to set it up! He is very good with computers. He’s designed websites, and he knows the languages required to do such things. But installing broadband had him searching for words to shout at the screen that wouldn’t curl the paper around him.

How is Mr Average supposed to do this? Half way through a two hour long process, he commented that it could be worse; he could be calling customer services in another country and trying to explain his problem in the language of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We have always joked that Help Desks in that country should be called Hindrance Desks. “Hello, this is your Internet Service Provider, how can we make life difficult for you? What can we do for you that will further ruin your day?”

I am thankful for small mercies and the big blessing of a hubby that simply doesn’t give up until he’s worked out the problem. Anyone reading this in New Zealand, and having the same problems, my husband charges $1000 / hr.

Movies

Have you noticed how dated films are from the 1950s and 60s? Either the sound is tinny, the acting wooden, the scripts corny or the sets wobbly.

Yesterday I saw one which was an exception. The plot wasn’t exactly good history, and it was rather long, but I would recommend it to anyone who would like to see something filmed on location in the Middle East in 1960. The film was “Exodus”. I had forgotten how handsome Paul Newman was, and that Ralph Richardson was once young.

Tonight I’m taking the jewellery “on the road” to a small bay town north of here. Just another step on the road to peace in the Middle East.

"Pain"oholic

Hectic, hectic, describes the last few days. But in the midst of them, I’ve been able to play with my new oven, and received a new recipe book, written by a friend in Haifa. So, today I’m making Challah bread (traditional for the Sabbath) and my evening reading has been a cute book by Peter Mayle (the same chap who wrote “A Year in Provence”). The book is called “Confessions of a French Baker”. Here is a slice from it.

“When normal methods of village diplomacy in Provence came to nothing, bread was the last resort. Once a year, on Christmas morning, villagers would take bread they had baked to the fountain, leave it on the edge of the bassin, and take away a loaf made by a neighbour. This was said to renew good relations between inhabitants who had fallen out with on another during the year”

Also, some trivia. Did you know that the croissant is in fact an Austrian invention, not a French one? It has its 424th birthday on Sunday. When Vienna was under siege by the Turkish military in 1683, some bakers raised the alarm when they heard strange noises below their bakery. The Turkish army was in the process of placing mines under the city’s fortifications. As a result of the baker’s vigilance the siege was lifted and the army left. To celebrate the end of the siege, the bakers of Vienna made bread in the shape of the crescent found on the Turkish flag. This is the original croissant. It’s more modern descendant was introduced in 1920 to France and we have been enjoying the decadent flaky pastry version ever since.

I confess, if there was a name for being a bread addict, I would have made it my own years ago. It amazes me the variations on basic ingredients of flour, water, yeast and sugar. I wonder what your favourites are? Mine are Peshwari Naan, fresh baguette, Semmel, Ciabatta, German rye and cinnamon bagels.

Sigh - I’ll never be slim.

Dancing to a different drum

I went to an interesting workshop yesterday on the Hebrew names of God. It involved a lot of drawing, movement and music. There were around 30 folk participating, and we all got to pick a name to work with. Mine was simply “Your Name”, or Sheem Kha. At one point we had to try and move our body in the shape of the Hebrew letters. I was amazed at the spirit of worship that welled up inside of me when I did this. Also, trying to pronounce this name was a bit like sighing. It was really beautiful.
I listened to some musicians on CD who have assembled music and song from ancient ME texts, including instruments which were known to have existed up to 4000 years ago. The artists, based in San Antonio, were amazing. What I found extraordinary was I recognised many lyrical phrases from modern Arabic music. It is fascinating how music can live for so long and be renewed and reborn in a different milieu. Some of the songs were in Aramaic, some Hebrew. They have a haunting quality which I have never heard before. I am checking today where I can get the CD of their music and will post details later.