Studying in French: What You Gain and What You Lose

A translation is a door. Without it, many would never enter.

It's also a filter: something passes through, something stays outside. Knowing what allows you to read a translation for what it is, without overestimating or despising it.

What You Gain

You enter. This is the point that outweighs all others. A text read in French is a text read; a text awaited until you know Hebrew is a text never opened.

You see the structure. Who speaks, who objects, how the discussion shifts: all of this passes through in a translation, and that's already a lot.

You move faster at the beginning. The time you don't spend deciphering, you spend thinking.

You can come back. Nothing prevents you from reading in French today and revisiting the same passage in Hebrew in two years. It won't be wasted time—on the contrary, knowing the meaning helps you read the original.

What You Lose

Words that have multiple meanings at once. A Hebrew root often carries several meanings that a French word must choose between. The translator decides, and that choice disappears from the text.

Sound connections. Two words that resemble each other in Hebrew no longer resemble each other in French. Yet these resemblances are sometimes the spring of an argument.

Half-spoken quotations. A text quotes three words from a verse and counts on you to know the rest—it's the uncited continuation that carries the argument. A translation restores the three words; the echo, no.

Density. Talmudic Aramaic is extremely brief. A translation must make things explicit to be readable, and this addition is necessary—but it changes the rhythm, and sometimes it resolves an ambiguity that the original left open.

The Difference Between Translation and Commentary

It's a useful distinction, and often blurred in current editions.

A translation renders what is written. A commentary adds what is not there and what helps understanding.

Many editions mix the two, adding in brackets or in small characters what is necessary for reading. This is legitimate and often indispensable.

But it's worth knowing, while reading, what comes from the text and what comes from the editor. When typography allows it, look at it. What the text doesn't say is sometimes as interesting as what it says.

How to Read a Translation Without Being Fooled

Look at the original alongside, even without reading it. Counting the lines is enough to see when the translation is three times longer—it's a sign that it makes a lot explicit.

Notice recurring words. If the same Hebrew term is translated differently across passages, you lose a thread. Some editions indicate this.

Learn about thirty words, no more. The formulas that introduce a question, an objection, a distinction. They recur everywhere, and recognizing them in the original completely changes your reading, even if everything else is read in French.

What This Means Concretely

You don't have to choose between reading in French and learning Hebrew.

Most of those who read in Hebrew today started with translation. One leads to the other far more often than the reverse.

An Honest Question

Are you not opening the text because you don't know enough Hebrew, or do you not know enough Hebrew because you don't open the text?

The two answer each other. You have to start with one end or the other.