# Hebrew translation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 26, 2026, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158 "2026-10-26T02:27:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158/1 "2026-10-26T02:27:57Z")
[Pic.](https://imgur.com/gallery/8XFcjjz) Found in a musical (movie) recently. ---
**Author:** ![FinsToTheLeft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finstotheleft/32/2930_2.png) [@FinsToTheLeft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinsToTheLeft)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158/2 "2026-10-26T02:32:50Z")
Google Translate - the top is yiddish, the bottom is Hebrew: > CHORUS > > She looks like a Niderrechtiner person for fun. Anthem protect! > > She was afraid of the new moon and she saw it in our house and I went there to see her and she was very happy and she was very happy. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158/3 "2026-10-26T02:46:49Z")
What movie is this from? Do you know approximately how far into the movie it was? ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158/4 "2026-10-26T02:59:44Z")
Well, I was trying to avoid the movie lest I poison the translation well, but you can see the frame and the purported translation starting at @1:19:57, but here: [King of Jazz (1930).](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxc8B96OrNY&t=1s) ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158/5 "2026-10-26T03:12:31Z")
Where do you see any Hebrew?? ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158/6 "2026-10-26T03:42:21Z")
> [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](#): > > Well, I was trying to avoid the movie lest I poison the translation well It’s interesting, because even before your post, AI strongly suspected the Google Translate of being wrong and ran a bunch of statistical, historical, and musical tests on it and suspected it of being a movie prop, likely a partially and poorly translated [illustrated song slide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_slide) for old-timey vaudeville. It thought the first 3 lines were plausibly legitimate, albeit older German-style Yiddish, with a few errors. But the remaining lines were out of order and had increasing errors that made them altogether unreadable and not plausibly real. Then with your link, it read the transcript and saw the English version of the same slide, in context, a few seconds later: [![](https://fightingignorance.org/e9bfd8a2-9c76-432c-bdc6-9892310256c0-2026-10-25-8-16-24-pm-ax5yp3fj.webp) ](https://fightingignorance.org/e9bfd8a2-9c76-432c-bdc6-9892310256c0-2026-10-25-8-16-24-pm-ax5yp3fj.webp) Even with that, the translation still wasn’t quite plausible. There were some transcription errors — verses that only made sense if you swapped some lookalike letters, which would then make them match the English translation. It might’ve just been a “good enough” prop that someone made without checking all the way…? An annotated translation/explanation: [![](https://fightingignorance.org/484f600d-9e96-49d2-b3ff-be39541f8641-king-of-jazz-yiddish-slide-explained.png) ](https://fightingignorance.org/484f600d-9e96-49d2-b3ff-be39541f8641-king-of-jazz-yiddish-slide-explained.png) ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158/7 "2026-10-26T03:57:05Z")
Also, TIL that English, Yiddish, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, and Aramaic are all related in written form… their scripts all descend from [Proto-Sinaitic script - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script) and [Phoenician alphabet - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet) and that’s why they’re so similarly alphabetical/[abjadic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad). I had no idea some of those scripts were even written in letters… I thought Arabic was something totally different. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158/8 "2026-10-26T06:58:00Z")
So, just to be clear, it is AI slop? From the 1930s? That is interesting; back then one could probably find people around who spoke Yiddish. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2026, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hebrew-translation/1034158/9 "2026-10-26T07:07:26Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > So, just to be clear, it is AI slop? From the 1930s? Heh, basically! The 2020s AI’s theory (I’m just paraphrasing here; I’m not a linguist in any way, shape, or form) is that a Yiddish speaker might’ve provided the translation in handwritten cursive to a sign-maker who might’ve not known the language very well, or at all. This was at a time when Yiddish in America was gradually changing from a German-heavy version to a more standardized one, with slightly different spelling. Maybe the sign-maker spent more time on the first few lines, resulting in only a few errors, and then got sloppier with the following lines until, by the end, it was completely nonsensical. In the movie, that sign is only on-screen for a few seconds. Maybe they figured no one would have time to read the whole thing anyway? It gets swapped out with the English version.