Over Yom Ha’atzmaut, I decided to dive in to the best of Israeli popular culture. For each new song of HaDag Nachash I managed to translate, I rewarded myself with a Goldstar Unfiltered Beer.

Both were tasty, but while the songs didn’t affect the quality of the beer, as the afternoon wore on the beer certainly began to affect the quality of the translations.

I got through three.

And then there was the back-and-forth with Shaanan Streett, over all the brilliant Hebrew word-play that is untranslatable. Three key examples from their latest single:

1. First of all, the title itself. On their youtube channel, עוד יהיה טוב  yihiye tov b’eretz yisrael is given as “Things will get better”. In the end for the translation we agreed on “All will yet be well”. It has more of a classical ring to it, which the strangely-dated chorus sound hints at.

2. Early on in the song, the rapper asks: “From what do I draw cheer?” And then throws down a translation challenge. “Not from the Labor (party) and certainly not from the Likud (party) – well maybe a little from the labor.” My slight of hand in putting a small “l” instead of a capital “L” for labor hints very poorly at the neat ambiguity in the Hebrew. Does he mean that he tends to the left of the political spectrum, or is he already sliding into a conversation about his own job? In Hebrew he could be saying both or neither. The English? Meh.

3. בנינו פיס בהתנחלויות Baninu Payis behitnachluyot refers to the standard-design cultural centers, sports and arts halls, that are built throughout the country by the National Lottery (Mif’al haPayis). A more literal translation would be something like “We built Payis buildings in the settlements”.  However since the non-Israeli is unlikely to recognize such a reference, we went for the double-meaning of “lottery” – not just that the institution builds structures in the West Bank, but that this is something of a gamble…

Here are the three songs in their agreed versions. Just click on the “cc” button to choose English subtitles. And crack open a beer…

And here they are performing a bit of the song on the banks of the Kinneret…