Wednesday 6 February 2013

Germany: Bla.la, the anti-Israel on-line dictionary (updated)

Updated February 8, 2013:
Wall:  "Indeed, the victory of the Palestinian people rises higher than the Israeli wall."
To annihilate:  "Israel has been pursuing a scorched-earth policy to annihilate the Palestinian people." (Thanks to Adam Levick)

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Elyes Kahn @ JSS wrote an article about an on-line dictionary created by three young Germans.  The dictionnary - Bla.la offers translations and usage examples.  And many of the usage examples are anti-Israel.  
Founding members: Andreas Schroeter, Thomas Schroeter, Patrick Uecker
Here are two examples of how to use and understand the word "greedy":
- Israel continued its greedy seizure of Arab territories.
- In truth, Sharon wanted to seize Palestinian land and annex it to Israel in order to satisfy his greedy desires.


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Isn't this a beautiful image?  How could one imagine to explain the word "greedy" without referring to Jews and Israel?  Isn't it beautifully and audaciously put: "In truth, Sharon wanted to seize Palestinian land and annex it to Israel in order to satisfy his greedy desires."   
And to emphasise  their greediness, the following example is:  "And you will undoubtedly find them the greediest of all people for life, (more greedy) than even those who associate partners with God."  Surprisingly translated into French:   "Et Allah connaît bien les injustes."  
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"The construction of the separation wall violated every right of the Palestinians."

"This has walled in Palestinian cities, towns and villages and transformed them into massive prisons and ghettos."

"How much longer would the United Nations continue to tolerate the new string of Warsaw ghettoes that the Occupied Palestinian Territory had become?"

"Generation upon generation of Palestinian children have never had a home other than the ghettos and camps that they have occupied throughout the world."

Oxfam, Briefing Note: Poverty in Palestine: The Human Cost of the Financial Boycott, Oxford, Royaume-Uni, 2007.

Some 22 languages are featured on the dictionnary, some of them virtually unknown and with different alphabets, but not... you will have guessed, Hebrew!  And if you want to translate the word "colonialisme" (the French call settlements "colonies"), former colonial powers do not come top of the list.  Not France, Spain, Great-Britain or Portugal [1]… Neither the Chinese or the Arabs.  Not even the Ottoman empire.  It's the Israelis.  There are lots of examples - almost 20 - and Israel is not a colonial State:
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If you type Golan, this list comes up:
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And it goes on and on.  But there also odd translations. 

"2500 Juifs" means in English "2500 Geek Orthodox":
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"Association internationale des avocats et juristes juifs" (International Assocation of Jewish lawyers and jurists" becomes in English: "Arab Organization for Human Rights":
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They wrote: "Nul n’entrera au Paradis que Juifs ou Chrétiens" translated into English as"peu importe ce que vous faites (le bien ou le mal) Dieu le voit d’un bon oeil".
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JSS invites its readers to write to site managers Here.  More about the "Bla.la dictionnary".

[1]  If you type "colonato" the word in Portuguese for settlements ("colony" in French) you get these four examples:

"Ariel Sharon has clearly said that there is a need to build a link between the settlement of Qiriat Arba and the Tomb of the Patriarchs." 
"It has a programme of aid and assistance to the Palestinians to help establish a Palestinian settlement." 
"I am sure there are many who are greatly disturbed to hear that the Israeli Government has decided to go ahead with the building of the settlement in East Jerusalem."
And this one totally mistranslated:
"Por isso saúdo esta retirada de Gaza enquanto símbolo do facto de nenhum colonato ser inamovível e de todos eles poderem ser desmantelados no futuro." ("In addition, the European Parliament has a role to play, through the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, in particular.")
And from Portuguese to German...

2 comments:

Adam Levick said...

Check out the sentence they use to explain the verb "annihilate"

Joanne said...

It seems like an example of antisemitism masked as anti-Zionism.