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When I wanted to know how to get to a certain address in Jerusalem, these were the travel instructions I got from Israel’s leading mapping website emap.co.il:

…
7.  Straight on Agripas
8.  Turn left on Ki’akh
9.  Straight on Ha-Nevi’im
10. Take ramp to say what?
…

Yes, it is not a software bug; it is an induced-Hebrew-learning feature.

There is no way around it, when it comes to computers, I am old school. When I first laid my hands on a keyboard, I was about seven years old and all the letters were in English. It was an Apple II clone, there was no hard disk, instead of a mouse there was a joystick, and of course there was no Hebrew involved.
The grown-up world was still trying to make these business machines work, so making them work in Hebrew, a language used by a few million people, was unheard-of.
To this day whenever I get an annoying ‘my computer does not work’ phone call from one of my computer illiterate friends, the first thing I am trying to establish is what pretentious action was executed to make a popular software fail. One time it was Nero not being able to burn Hebrew-named files onto a CD. Another time it was a graphics editor that kept refusing to open photos from a Hebrew named folder.
This is why I consider myself old school, as I always try to make it work and never insist on making it work my way. My thinking is always: it worked for a couple billion users, what possibly could Dana from Jerusalem do to make it break down?

I am aware, though, that I am pretty much alone in this battle: while I consider Hebrew an added bonus within the IT world, most Israelis approach it with a sense of entitlement. ‘If it does not work in Hebrew – it does not work’ some say. Others confess to not even trying to read any English, pressing the [Yes] or [No] buttons arbitrarily or by gut instinct.
The number 1 movie database is in English? Let’s use database number 700 – it’s in Hebrew!
You Google for answers in Hebrew and get none? Chances are you stumbled upon one of those eternal unanswered mysteries of the universe!

This was pretty much the mentality around here, until MySpace and Facebook arrived. All of a sudden, Israelis found out they can read and write in English when they want to, and they started seeing the benefit in communicating worldwide using one universal language.
For all those people (some of which are my best friends) I hold the utmost disdain:
You who have frowned upon your (copied) software for not doing what you wanted it to do,
You who have allowed your personal computers to contract viruses, Trojan horses and venereal diseases because the warnings were in English,
You who have called your geeky friends in all hours of the day and night, horrified that your computer stopped working after clicking ‘Yes’ to an ‘Are you sure?’ message box you have not read,
All of you should be ashamed.

Only now did you discover you can actually put to use the second language your country made you learn from grade 4 to 12?

As a teenager during the 1980’s we went to the movies a lot. Before a movie came out there was no hype, no buzz, no trailers on YouTube, and no behind-the-scenes shown on TV, so picking what movie to see often boiled down to the single-colored text-only poster that each cinema in my hometown published on the public billboards.
I guess the Israeli film distributors were aware of these facts, and decided that if all they have to work with is the name of the film, then by golly they would make it work.

You see, I believe a movie is a work of art from beginning to end, including its title, and when distributing it in another country one should try to translate it with great respect and fervor. I guess the local distributors here do not share my ideas, as they pretty much translate the titles whichever way they see fit, or whichever way they think would make more money.

Sometimes these translations are far-fetched like ‘White Palace‘ (1990, Susan Sarandon, James Spader) that was translated to Hebrew as ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’, preceding the movie ‘When a Man Loves a Woman‘ (1994, Andy Garcia, Meg Ryan) that then had to be translated to Hebrew as ‘The Love of a Man for a Woman’.

Other times it seems the distributor was on vacation, as the movies were just phonetically translated and so Big (1988, Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins), Heat (1995, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro) and Elephant (2003, by Gus Van Sant) remained the same words spelled phonetically in Hebrew: ביג, היט, אלפנט

But during the eighties the biggest film distributors’ shtick was riding the coattails of a successful film and naming an unrelated film in a way that would mislead a teenager to think this movie is a sequel to a movie he already saw.
The number one example for that is ‘Police Academy‘ (1984, Steve Guttenberg, Kim Cattrall), originally translated to Hebrew as ‘A Drill for Novice Policemen‘. After the movie became successful there were six sequels made, but in Israel all of a sudden many unrelated films became ‘A Drill for Novice Something-or-the-other’.

Here is a partial list:
Gotcha! (1985) – A Drill for A Novice Spy
Doin’ Time (1985) – A School for Novice Convicts
Bad Medicine (1985) – A School for Novice Doctors
Buy & Cell (1987) – A Drill for Gambling Convicts
UHF (1989) – A Station for Novice Anchormen
Beach Movie (1998) – A Drill for Novice Surfers
Miss Cast Away (2004) – A Drill for Novice Models
Gladiatress (2004) – A Drill for Novice Gladiatresses

The really sad part is that I actually fell for it and went to see most of these movies.

If you ever need to decypher the original name of a movie, you can check out Targumon, a website dedicated just for that purpose.

There’s nothing young Israelis like better than to make a fast buck. That’s why when they are in their twenties, after the mandatory army service, many of them travel abroad to work mainly in two countries: Japan, selling paintings to wealthy Japanese, or to the US selling nail care products to soccer moms. The legitimacy of these jobs is borderline at best as the hiring company usually enrolls them in bogus college courses in order to get a work permit.

Rami Feinstein , a rising Israeli singer-songwriter, usually sings in Hebrew, but after he worked in the US selling manicure products to finance his debut album, he decided to take the script he worked off of to lure customers, and compose it into a song.

Here is the video for the song, called “Something Amazing“:

Something Amazing – Rami Feinstein - lyrics

Excuse me miss,
Can I…
Can I ask you a question?
Do you have natural nails?
Can I show you something amazing,
For only twenty seconds of your time?

Come closer,
Step into my office.
See it’s a
Professional buffer,
It has three sides:
The black is made out of diamond dust,
And the white is cotton,
And the grey…
The grey is the most magical side
It’s gonna make your nails shine for
Two whole weeks.

Come here,
Come close.

Chorus:
Let me show you something amazing,
Something amazing,
Something amazing,
Can I show you something amazing,
Something amazing,
For your nails?

See on a regular day
We sell it for
Thirty-nine ninety nine,
But, you know,
Thirty-nine ninety nine is
Also a good price,
Because,
You got…
You got… It’s a whole kit:
You got a lotion,
You got some cuticle oil inside,
It’s actually for all of your body,
But today,
Only today,
Only for you,
We have a special promotion going on
And it’s only twenty-nine ninety nine.

Here, come close,
Put some lotion on,
Put it on…
I know you want to,
I know you want to.

Chorus

Who? Me? I’m just…
You know, I’m not a salesman,
I just came here for a few months for Christmas.
I’m really a musician,
I wanna make some money for my
Album.

No, I’m not a salesman,
No, just…
Really,
This is my first time doing this.
If you can think of someone else
That would like this as a Christmas gift?
You know, if you buy two
You get a better price.

Chorus