Is There A Word "Depropertization"?

I spotted this in the Museum of the Underground Prisoners in the former Central Jerusalem Prison in the Russian Compound.



Is there really a word like that, "depropertization"?

Well, I found this academic article:

The generally disappointing outcomes of privatization can always be explained away in terms of ‘institutional’ shortcomings, but the real challenge is to devise more flexible property rules to deal with diverse goods and local environments. The rest of the paper notes some of the most salient anthropological contributions in a range of other fields, including intellectual property and ‘culture’. While some scholars reject the concept of property in non-Western contexts, recent work in legal anthropology has laid out a rigorous definition that facilitates comparative analysis and exposes the limitations of the currently dominant economistic approaches. ‘Propertization’ is continuously establishing new ‘fictitious commodities’, but it is argued here that some critics of neoliberalism exaggerate the nightmare of its property logic and overlook the countertendencies.

and then this:

P. 10 -

Functionarization and to a large extent depropertization of dominant groups in the XIX century as major tendency, much more important for Russia than awkward development of capitalism during that period

and also this:

Obama's job is to take you away from anarchism, not towards it. And he's is for more dangerous because he uses far more deceptive means ("localization," "hope"). Let's remember the history - the welfare statists were created by the elite to keep revolution (depropertization) at bay.

Hmmm.

I would have used simply "arms expropriation".

I think the translator was being too literal and was a Hebrew speaker using a good dictionary but the word is too 'superior' and doesn't fit.

You'll Never Know Where You'll Find A Revenant

Ruchie is a good friend and comrade-in-words:

The Begin-Sadat center had trouble finding translators to provide simultaneous English for the foreign guests and journalists. In the end they found Ruchi Avital, who teaches translation at the university. She has lived in the settlement of Ofra for 23 years.

"They refused to give us the text ahead of time, not even the translators," she complained. "I am tense like everyone else, but I guess I am part of the event. In this instance I need to be Netanyahu's voice, but every translation is an interpretation."

In the earphones, Avital's voice did not break when she said "demilitarized state," but several moments later her tone rose, nearly cracked when she told the listeners that the settlers are not the enemy of peace but "our brothers and sisters."

Holocaust Poem of Uri Tzvi Greenberg

Uri Tzvi Greenberg: Under the tooth of their plow


translated by Milton Teichman (with corrections by Yisrael Medad)
The American Poetry Review, July 1995
Published in Rechovot HaNahar (*), page 279-280


Again the snows have melted there--and the murderers now are farmers.(1)

They have gone out there to plow their fields--fields that are my graveyards.

If the tooth of the plow digs up a skeleton which breaks over the furrow,

The plowman will neither grieve nor tremble

But he will smile--he will recognize the mark his implement left.

Once more a spring landscape--flowering bulbs, lilac, twittering birds.

Herds lie down by the shallow waters of the sparkling stream.

Only there are no more Jews walking by -- with their beards and sidecurls.

They are gone from the inns with their prayershawls and fringes;

Gone from the shops that sold trinkets, or cloths, or food.

Gone from their workshops, gone from the trains, the markets, the synagogues-

All, all under the tooth of the Christian plow.

With abounding grace God has visited his Gentiles.

Yes, springtime is springtime--and the summer will be bountiful.

Roadside trees swell as those in the gardens.

Never has fruit been so red now that there are no more Jews.

Jews had no bells that rang for God.

Blessed is Christianity for they have bells ringing from on high.

Even now, the voice of bells rings over the plain, flowing over a

bright and fragrant landscape.

The bells are a mighty voice, master of everything.

Once they passed over the roofs of Jews--but no more.

Blessed is Christianity for it has bells on the heights to honor

a God who is good to Christians and to all....

And all the Jews lie under the tooth of their plow,

Or under the pasture grass,

Or in forest graves,

Or on the banks of rivers, or within them,

Or on the roadsides.

Praise be to Yezunyu (2) with solemn bells: Bim-bam!

-------------------

Notes

1. The reference is to Poles who collaborated with the Nazis in the murder of Jews.

2. Diminutive for Jesus.

================================================

(*)

Wolf-Monzon, Tamar.
Livnat, Zohar.

The Poetic Codes of Rechovot ha-nahar ("Streets of the River"), pp. 19-33

Rechovot ha-nahar, Uri Zvi Greenberg's great book of lamentation over the destruction and loss of European Jewry, follows an ancient tradition of lamentation over the destruction and persecution of the Jewish people which has developed in Hebrew poetry since the era of the piyyut and medieval poetry. In this book Greenberg uses a new poetic language, including concepts and expressions such as kosef ('yearning'), nigun ('melody') and nofim ('landscapes'), which appear for the first time in this book but will reappear in other contexts in later texts. In this sense, Rehovot ha-nahar is a constitutive text, which introduces a new poetic and linguistic code.

Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Volume 23, Number 2, Winter 2005

A Fractured Translation

This has been spotted in Jerusalem:-



The correct translation is:-

Careful, Trucks Crossing

Translation Alternative

In his review of A.B. Yehoshua's newest novel rendered into English, Ethan Bronner writes this paragraph:-

the death that haunts this story isn’t that of her sister, Yirmi’s wife, but of her nephew, his son, six years earlier as a soldier in the Israeli-­occupied West Bank. He was accidently shot by fellow soldiers during an ambush, the victim of what is called in English “friendly fire.” In Hebrew — Eish Yedidutit — these words don’t carry the same meaning, and therefore have a jarring impact on both the ear and the heart. In his rage and desperation, Yirmi seizes on this phrase, translated from English, when he first hears it as “some small spark of light that would help me navigate through the great darkness that awaited me and better identify the true sickness that afflicts all of us.”

The translation of that phrase, which is Stuart Schoffman's, is indeed problematic but the translation is adequate.

What I think, though, that Bronner is trying to convey in his comment that "these words don’t carry the same meaning" is that it could have been rendered as "friendship fire" to give it a more resonant meaning since 'friend' in Hebrew is actualy "chaver" (חבר) and 'friendly fire' should have been then: "eish chaverit".

Yedid in Hebrew also relates to God, as in the 500-year old Sabbath Hymn, "Yedid Nefesh".

Haaretz Translation

Haaretz web site now has this posted at its news flashes:

22:33 Militants open fire at Israeli bus near Ramallah, no one hurt (Army Radio)

Here's the original Hebrew:

אש נפתחה לעבר אוטובוס ישראלי בסמוך לרמאללה

עדכון אחרון: 20:53 , 27/04/2008

אש נפתחה לפני זמן קצר לעבר אוטובוס ישראלי שנסע סמוך לכפר סילוואד שבאזור רמאללה.
לא היו נפגעים, אך נזק נגרם לאוטובוס.

The word "militants" is nowhere to be found. The story is in passive - "fire opened on Israeli bus near Silwad" (by the way, that's probably my bus line, #148).