Why your vote matters

Tomorrow Israel holds general elections for the Knesset (parliament). Like many democracies, Israel has seen a decline in voter turnout, and voters who care are trying to encourage others to vote.

There has even been some discussion of countries where voting is compulsory. I'm not sure whether this would be a good idea, or how it would be enforced. I think it is better to convince voters of the importance of casting their votes voluntarily.

I think people would be more likely to vote if they saw it as a duty rather than a right. While it is often perceived as a right, and therefore not compulsory, voting in a democracy is intended to ensure that the ruling body reflects the wishes of the people. The more people vote, the more closely the composition of the parties in the Knesset reflects the opinions of the citizens.

Israelis often talk about the civic duty to serve in the military, which is compulsory here, and complain about those who manage to avoid this duty. I would say that voting in the elections is another civic duty that people should take more seriously. It requires less time and effort than military service, and has an impact on more aspects of daily life.

Many people say they are not going to vote because none of the parties reflects their views. To this I would say that you don't have to agree with 100% of the positions of a party in order to vote for it. It's sufficient that you think this party is closer to your position than any other party, or that it's the least bad of the parties available.

Some people are frustrated because they think their vote is not going to have any impact among the 5,656,705 eligible voters. This is like saying that nothing you ever do matters because there are so many other people in the world. If everyone thought like this, nobody would vote. You can't leave this responsibility to others. I argue that everything you do matters in the total sum of human actions.

All of our actions matter and have some influence, large or small, on others around us and ultimately on the whole of humanity and the world. This is why I think everyone should be considerate and cooperative at all times. If you believe smiling at a stranger can somehow make the world a better place, even if only to a small extent, then you should believe that every vote matters.

Apathy and a feeling of disempowerment are attitudes that people inflict on themselves. Here you are given an opportunity to express the power that you are able to have within a democracy, and turning away from it can be harmful to your sense of controlling your destiny and belonging to a community.

Other people say they don't understand politics. I find this strange, since it is quite easy to grasp the positions of the different parties and what their policies would mean for different individuals and groups. Part of our civic duty is to learn about things happening in our country and community, and form opinions about these things.

I have voted in every Knesset and municipal election since I reached voting age (18). I think it matters in two ways. First, this is how I can influence, even in a small way, what happens in my country and community. Second, it matters to me to know that I consider myself a person who cares enough to express her views and make this contribution to her community.

I will vote tomorrow, and urge all eligible voters to do their civic duty and vote, both for the sake of our democracy being more representative, and for their own sense of who they are.

ITA Lectures: Zuckermann and Sela-Shapiro

Last week I attended a lecture event organized by the Israel Translators Association in Haifa, at the Mount Carmel Hotel.

The first lecture was by linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann. I had previously heard him speak about his somewhat controversial assertion that what we speak in Israel is in fact Israeli, not Hebrew, since the revived language includes influences from Yiddish and other modern Indo-European languages, and has not remained strictly a Semitic language like its ancestor. Thus far, his theory was quite convincing, but it turned out he also advocates a very "descriptive" rather than "prescriptive" ideology, which went a bit too far, in my opinion, in accepting the spoken language and rejecting the idea that there are rules people can learn and use.

This time, his lecture was on a rather different subject, Revival Linguistics. Zuckermann now teaches linguistics in Australia, and has been involved in reviving some of the Aboriginal languages. Some figures quoted: There are 250 Aboriginal languages in Australia, of which only 18 (17%) are still living. Of 7,000 world languages, we will lose 90% within the next century (unless action is taken). 96% of the world's population speak 4% of the world's languages, which means only 4% of the population speak the remaining 96% of languages, probably only a small population per language.

Much of the lecture was devoted to the reasons for reviving "sleeping" languages, which was the aspect I found most interesting. The Aboriginal languages became extinct through a deliberate policy of linguicide imposed by the colonialists. Loss of a language entails loss of cultural autonomy. These languages contained traditional stories and symbols and contributed to cultural diversity. Some languages contain unique concepts that do not exist in other languages. Learning a native language empowers individuals and groups and being bilingual improves other skills.

I found myself becoming convinced of the importance of reviving minority languages. While it would be easy to argue that in today's world it is most important to speak one of the major world languages, I now understand the ideology and idealism that wishes to teach people the traditional languages of their ancestors, even if these are spoken by relatively small groups. I find this particularly worthwhile if the children are brought up bilingual, as I was, and learn to move between two linguistic and cultural worlds from an early age.

After dinner, the second lecture was by translator Yael Sela-Shapiro. She discussed the problems of translating scientific and technical material into Hebrew, where there are vocabulary voids. After explaining the problem, the suggested solutions were as follows: where there is a familiar and accepted translation, it can be used, taking the target audience into account. Where there is an accepted but perhaps less familiar translation, the word can be used with the foreign word in parentheses the first time. Where there is a translation that is unfamiliar, or there are two translations, it is worth consulting the customer and also placing the foreign word in parentheses. Where there is no Hebrew equivalent, consult the customer, and discuss inventing a new word, with explanation, or transliterating the foreign word, or leaving the foreign word in the original, according to the target audience's preferences.

This lecture led to a lively discussion about word formation in Hebrew, and about how to estimate the expectations of the target audience. Towards the end she presented some words she and other translators had invented to translate into Hebrew words that were invented in English in SF books.

Both lecturers were knowledgeable, charismatic, and experienced speakers who engaged with the audience. I was pleased that about 50 people attended this lecture, a similar attendance to the ITA events held in Tel Aviv, and hope many more such events will be held in Haifa.

Finishing NaNoWriMo

Yesterday I finished writing my 50,000 word book as part of the NaNoWriMo writing challenge.

This year, instead of writing a novel in 30 days, I worked on a non-fiction book. It's a collection of essays on different subjects. Here are some of the lessons I learned from this year's writing experience.

First of all, I now know I can do it, and it doesn't feel like such a great effort to achieve this goal compared with the first time I did it in 2010.

Second, I found, as expected, that writing essays is easier for me than writing fiction. Perhaps I am more of an essayist than a fiction writer. I have always found it quite easy to write about any given subject that interested me. At school I think I received the highest marks for Hebrew Composition, and while others struggled to find things to write, I found it easy to structure an essay and write it out. I suppose writing non-fiction is part of my work as a translator, though there I have to write what the text said in the original language rather than make it up from scratch. My blog has also allowed me to practice this sort of writing.

There are important differences between writing fiction and writing non-fiction, and also between having a long-form and short-form structure. In a novel, you have to plan where the story goes and build a narrative that develops throughout the work. In my collection of essays, they were all linked and built on each other to some extent, but it wasn't a linear development. I know that some non-fiction books manage to be structured in a more linear way, with each chapter or section building on previous chapters, but this wasn't that sort of book. Perhaps it will become more linear during the editing process.

Fiction is very specific. It tells the story of events happening to and around specific characters, in a specific setting, over a set period. My non-fiction was trying to be general. What I wrote is supposed to be applicable to the reader's life, and so it couldn't be as specific as fiction. It had to address a wide range of possibilities. I understand that this is something I do in my own thinking: I try to generalize from specific experiences and events. Readers of this blog may recall blog posts like that, where I start with something specific and end up reaching some more general conclusions.

Because I had decided in advance on a list of topics for the book, and knew it would undergo extensive editing after I had written all the essays, this freed me from the need to think about the book as a whole while I was writing it. I knew that the editing process would allow me to put things in the right order, make the necessary connections, and get rid of any repetitive parts.

As I have noted before, the editing process seems more daunting to me than writing, and this is why I know that it's time for me to work harder on this part of the writing profession. I will have to edit this book, and also the first novel I wrote during NaNoWriMo in 2010. I hope to learn a lot from the editing process, and also to learn how to plan and outline books before I start writing.

I didn't manage to write every day during November, and sometimes I had to write two or three times the daily average word count to make up for days I had missed (and I still managed to finish the day before the deadline!). Finding that I could write nearly 5,000 words in one day when I had to proved to me that I can do it, and I intend to keep writing, even when I don't have a writing challenge and can be more flexible with my daily word count.

NaNoWriMo 2012

November has arrived, and it's time to embark on the annual NaNoWriMo writing challenge, to write a 50,000 words book in 30 days.

This year I'm working on a non-fiction book, despite the word "novel" in the challenge's title (National Novel Writing Month). Since it's no longer "national", I'm stretching the definition of "novel" a bit and using the challenge to write non-fiction. It's still a very personal and creative work, just not a work of fiction.

As with previous years, I prefer not to discuss the contents of my work while it's in process. But I can talk about the process of writing, and hope this will interest fellow writers and other language professionals.

This is a project I've been thinking about doing for a long time. I created a bit of an outline before I started. I wrote a list of 30 subjects that can serve as chapters or sections within the book. I don't know if they will all be of equal length, or whether I will be able to work neatly on one section a day, but the idea of 30 subjects in 30 days seemed like a helpful plan, at least before the fact. I'll have to wait and see how it turns out in practice.

I know that when I've finished writing I'll need a lot of editing. So far, I have little experience in editing my own creative work. I have yet to edit the two novels I have completed in previous NaNoWriMo challenges. I know that this is an important skill to acquire - both the technical aspects of editing (which I do professionally, but not for fiction, which has some different considerations) and the self-discipline of viewing my own writing objectively. I wonder why I have not done this yet for these novels, and what that says about my intentions as a writer...

With this book, it should be possible to rearrange the 30 sections in an order or structure that will start to emerge once they are written. I think I should do this after the whole thing is written and I can see it holistically. I know it may involve a lot of rewriting, but that might be easier when I can move around things I have already written. Editing this non-fiction book might be more similar to the sort of academic editing I do professionally, compared with editing novels, which I have never done.

I have already written more than the recommended minimum today, and feel very positive about this project. I will have more to say about the differences between writing fiction and non-fiction later on.

Good luck to all participants, and to writers everywhere!

Connie Willis - Blackout and All Clear

Connie Willis, Blackout, Gollancz, 2010.
Connie Willis, All Clear, Gollancz, 2010.

These two books form one novel and should be read together. I'm not sure why it was published in two volumes, since novels of this size are sometimes published in a single volume.

This is a time travel historical novel. The story starts in Oxford in 2060, as three young historians set out to travel back to witness various events in World War II England. At the time of their departure the time travel operation has been thrown into chaos, with schedule changes and delays.

We follow Eileen, who has taken a position as a maid in a manor house in order to study the children evacuated from London; Mike, who wants to interview the heroes of the Dunkirk evacuation; and Polly, working as a shop girl in a London department store during the Blitz. They are really undercover, more like spies than anthropologists, and have to fit into the wartime society without raising suspicions.

They soon realize that the "drops" or gateways through which they can time travel back to 2060 are not functioning, and they are stuck in the past. At first, they expect a rescue team from their time to come and get them, but the months pass and this does not happen. Worse, they each start to have doubts about the very nature of time travel. The accepted theory states that the past cannot be changed, and so it is assumed that historians working undercover cannot affect events in any significant way. But their presence in the war seems to be changing things - they save lives and have various impacts on the people around them. This makes them worry that they might have changed the future, with two possible negative outcomes: the war might be lost, and the future might develop so differently that time travel is never invented.

I usually have trouble with time travel stories, so I was pleased that the paradoxes were discussed early on, explicitly and in an interesting way. This novel ignores the multiple world interpretation, and never seems to suggest that there could be more than one reality.

The three main characters get together and try to work out what has been happening, and to send messages that could be found by historians in 2060 to help the rescue team locate them. But each person approaches the problem in a different way, and they withhold information from each other at first. Not much is said about the lives they left behind in 2060, and they seem to adjust to their new lives quite easily, despite the difficult circumstances of the war.

The depiction of life in England during the war is vivid and touching, and bears the message that the war was won largely by everyone doing their bit, helping in whatever way was most appropriate. This portrayal of everyday heroism by "ordinary" people is a lesson worth teaching. I have lived through wars that involved attacks on the home front, and can say from my experience that people react in different ways, and the spirit of cooperation needs to be nurtured in such situations.

Much of the novel involves people rushing around trying to find clues, or leaving clues for the future. It has a restless feeling, teetering between desperation and hope. Eventually a satisfying conclusion is reached. This was one of the best novels I have read for a while, and I recommend it to a wide readership, even to those who would normally avoid anything involving time travel.

Ireland

We spent the first week of October in Ireland. This was our first visit, and in general the country seemed very similar to the UK in many ways: landscape, architecture, weather... We stayed in a friend's flat in central Dublin.

The purpose of our visit was a lecture Ivor was invited to give at the philosophy department of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. The train ride from Dublin to Maynooth (in County Kildare) took about 40 minutes.

Royal Canal, Maynooth

Pugin Hall, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth

New Library, National University of Ireland, Maynooth

The university shares a campus with St. Patrick's College, a Roman Catholic Seminary. After the lecture, we were invited to lunch with the department's staff in Pugin Hall, the refectory of the seminary.

The next day we took a guided day trip to Glendalough and Kilkenny organized by Collins Day Tours. This was one of many tours offered at the tourist information office opposite the main entrance to Trinity College, provided by various tour companies.

We drove through the Wicklow mountains to Glendalough, where we walked along by the lakes and through the woods. It was cold and windy, but sometimes quite sunny, and the surroundings were spectacular.

Upper Lake, Glendalough

Waterfall, Glendalough

Wood, Glendalough

Lower Lake, Glendalough

We visited the 6th century monastic settlement of Glendalough, containing an impressive stone tower, a stone church called St. Kevin's Kitchen, the ruins of several other churches, and many graves from different periods.

Tower and St. Kevin's Kitchen, Glendalough

Tower and graves, Glendalough

From there we drove through the Wicklow Gap to Kilkenny, Ireland's medieval capital. We had a walk through the town, had time for lunch, and visited Kilkenny Castle.

Street view, Kilkenny

Street view towards St. Canice's Cathedral, Kilkenny

View towards Kilkenny Castle

Kilkenny Castle

We spent the rest of the week in Dublin, visiting some of its many museums and attractions. We were staying quite close to Trinity College, and visited the grounds and the Book of Kells exhibition. The college contains some attractive buildings, but the exhibition in the library was a bit disappointing, compared to most of the other museums we visited, where admission was free.

The Campanile, Trinity College, Dublin

Sphere within a Sphere, Trinity College, Dublin

Trinity College, Dublin

We visited Dublin Castle, and in its grounds the Chester Beatty Library, a museum well worth visiting, containing an exhibition of ancient books and religions.

Dublin Castle

Dublin Castle

Chester Beatty Library

Not far from Dublin Castle is Dublinia, an exhibition of recreated tableaux about the Vikings and Medieval Dublin. This museum also charged an admission fee, but we felt it was worth it for those interested in the city's history. The top floor contained an educational exhibition about archaeology, and the ticket also includes admission to the tower of St. Michael's church, with views over the city.

Scene at Dublinia

View from tower of St. Michael's Church, Dublin

We visited the National Museum, displaying archaeological finds, including some preserved bog bodies. I must admit feeling a bit squeamish about seeing these remains, and all I could do was hope these individuals had experienced some happiness in their long-ago lives. Nearby, we also went to the National Gallery of Ireland, with its impressive art collection.

 

 

National Gallery of Ireland

Apart from its museums, Dublin offers pleasant outdoor walks when the weather allows (and we were fortunate during our visit). St. Stephen's Green is a park I enjoyed visiting, and we also walked along the river Liffey.

Pond, St. Stephen's Green

Ruth & Ivor, St. Stephen's Green

St. Stephen's Green

Samuel Beckett Bridge, River Liffey

North of the river we saw the Spire of Dublin, an impressive sculpture, and also watched a film at the Savoy Cinema, Dublin's oldest cinema.

The Spire of Dublin and statue of Jim Larkin

Our central location made it convenient for us to visit Grafton Street, a pedestrianized shopping street. We saw the street entertainers and ate at Bewley's.

Grafton Street, Dublin

I really enjoyed this visit to Dublin. The people were friendly, the weather was good - not too cold or rainy, with some sunny spells. There were many interesting places to visit, many of them free, and a week was a good length of time to devote to one city. We didn't get to see very much of the rest of Ireland, but enjoyed what we did see.

Reflections on tolerance

Yom Kippur is traditionally a time for reflection on one's self. This year I had the opportunity to learn a bit about myself from observing my reactions while painting work was being done in my house at the beginning of this week.

First, these two days made me think about what home means to me. Home is a private and safe space where I can be myself. I spend the vast majority of my life at home (because this is also where I work), and when people visit it is usually on my terms. During these two days we had furniture moved around and there was no privacy. I was reduced to sitting in one corner of the living room while the work went on, and the cats had to hide. It felt intrusive, and even though I knew the work had to be done to improve our standard of living, the process was not enjoyable.

The second thing I started to notice was what I perceived as the inconsiderate behaviour of the workers. Despite being told not to smoke indoors they smoked, at first only on the balcony, and then in other rooms. They also made more mess than was necessary, and their idea of cleaning up afterwards was scraping the most prominent paint marks off the floor, but no more than that. I kept thinking that if I had to work in someone else's house I would be more considerate of their personal space and their priorities. I became aware that this degree of consideration for others, which I consider as one of my most important qualities, must be quite rare. Most people do what they can get away with.

I then started asking myself why I wasn't being more assertive. I could have told them again not to smoke indoors, and perhaps nagged them to be more careful with the paint or to clean up the dust and paint more thoroughly. But I didn't want to create a bad atmosphere, so it appears that my desire for conflict avoidance outweighs my expectation of consideration from others. Even though their behaviour was obviously bothering me, I found that I could tolerate it.

The word "tolerance" comes from a Latin verb, tolero, meaning "to bear, to endure". This definition makes sense to me. A tolerant person can endure something unwelcome or unpleasant rather than reacting against it. Instead of just thinking about my own needs, I was willing to let the workers behave in the way they wanted. In a similar way, I am often willing to stand in the longest queue (line) in the supermarket because I know I am more patient than many others, and so it is easier for me to bear or endure the wait.

Tolerance comes from a place of inner strength. A tolerant person has empathy for others, is aware of the differences between individuals, and is willing to accept a wide range of behaviours and attitudes, even the disagreeable ones. I bore the workers' lack of consideration for my needs because I knew it was temporary, and the alternative, being assertive, would create tension and perhaps lower their motivation to do a good job. I choose to view this as strength rather than weakness on my part. The ability to put my own needs aside and allow others to do something I find bothering is a minor form of self-sacrifice I consider generous or even noble, to some extent.