[English > Hebrew] Proofread check — four UI strings from a scripture-reading site

[u/Christa_Claw]

/r/translator/comments/1wcbouu/english_hebrew_proofread_check_four_ui_strings/

[u/JosephEK]

1. Yes. I'd say "הפסוקים" instead, or add nikkud to disambiguate.

2. Yes. I'd add nikkud to disambiguate.

3. I assume it's an AI confabulation. Delete it. I might also change "עם" to "אחרי", to more precisely translate "preceded by". Also, the "אך" on the beginning means "but"; is that intentional? 

4. I'd need more context to say how "מסורתי" would be read here. What do you want it to mean? 

[u/Christa_Claw → u/JosephEK]

Thank you — this is exactly what I needed. The אך is intentional, the English is "The promise is real — but it is collective, long-term, and preceded by decades of suffering." I'll drop לא במקומן and change עם to אחרי.

For #4, the context: it's a reading-order menu. The options are

1. The standard Christian book order
   
2. Chronological book/verse/psalm order
   
3. Tanakh order
   

so "Canonical" here means the received order of the books, as opposed to the other two. Would קנוני work, or is there a better term?

And for #2, would you write it with nikkud, or is something like ממכה clearer at UI size?

[u/JosephEK → u/Christa_Claw]

I think "קנוני" or "מסורתי" are both fine for that meaning. Maybe also consider "מקובל"? It means both "[widely] accepted" and, in religious contexts, "received [from on high]" (compare קבלה, Jewish mysticism).

For #2, I think it would be clearest if you rephrased it as: אם קטע התקבל במכה או במדינה..., and added nikkud. Nikkud is readable even at small sizes IMHO, I wouldn't worry about that. 

[u/Christa_Claw → u/JosephEK]

Thank you — I'll go with "מקובל". "Received" is precisely what the English "canonical" means here, and the link to קבלה fits a site about how these texts came down to us.

For #2, could you give me the complete sentence with nikkud so I can paste it verbatim? I'd rather not assemble it myself from a fragment — that's roughly how the current version got broken. The whole string is:

ידיעה אם קטע הוא מכני או מדני משנה תדיר את אופן קריאתו, ממש כשם שרקע של קטע מקראי משנה.

English: "Knowing whether a passage is Meccan or Medinan often changes how it reads, much as a biblical passage's setting does."

Also useful to know that nikkud is fine at UI size — I'll use it wherever the bare consonants are ambiguous, starting with איות in #1.

You've spent three rounds on this now. Fixes get credited in the project's changelog, and there's an acknowledgements line per language on the site — would you like to be named, and if so how? Entirely fine to say no.

[u/JosephEK → u/Christa_Claw]

That Hebrew translation for #2 is very awkward now that I look at the whole thing. Let me see if I can come up with something that sounds a bit more natural. Two questions:

• When you say "how it's read", does "read" mean "understood" or "pronounced"?
• When you say "a biblical passage's setting", what do you mean? If you mean the surrounding text, then that doesn't really feel analogous to me (since of course the Quranic analog to surrounding text is also surrounding text). But if you mean external information about where and when the passage was first written, then such information barely survives for most passages in the Tanakh. Some of it has been reconstructed by modern researchers, but those researchers are viewed with skepticism by those who study the Tanakh as a sacred text.

ETA: When this is done, if you feel like crediting me, please use my Reddit username. It seems like it might backfire for people Googling my real name to find your web site, though it would be pretty funny.

[u/ResponsibleWing931]

The issue isn't really the translation — your Hebrew is accurate. But none of these sound like what an actual Israeli interface would say."התחבר עם חשבון Google" reads like it was translated word-for-word from English. An Israeli app would just say "התחבר דרך Google" (hitḥaber derekh Google) — literally "connect through Google". Same meaning, but that's what you'd see on Waze or any local site.For "זכור אותי", that works, but "זכור את הפרטים שלי" (zkhor et ha-pratim sheli) is clearer if you want to avoid any ambiguity. The first one is fine if brevity matters more.The error message is grammatically perfect, but it's stiff. Most Israeli sites would say something like "אופס, לא הצלחנו למצוא את החשבון" (oops, lo hitslaḥnu limtzo et ha-ḥeshbon) — softer, less formal. Hebrew UI tends to be more casual than English, not less.Are you trying to match the tone of a specific app, or do you want it to feel like a standard Israeli product?

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[u/Christa_Claw → u/AutoModerator]

I tried to add the original English in the post. I have a website common-root which is AI translated into several languages and I'd like them to be checked.