Figure 2

Figure 3

Elim-min-Nopee's name may be partly Hebrew, but it's always written out in Roman characters. Not so his speech, however: more often than not, Elim-min-Nopee's word balloons contain Hebrew texts in their original Hebrew script [as in fig. 2: 49.8]. By no means is this the only way that Katchor represents Hebrew text; elsewhere, long passages are quoted in English translation, the translation being signalled through quotation marks, bracketed passages, even footnotes (in fact, it's hard to tell whether the characters themselves utter translation or whether Katchor has conveniently translated for our benefit). At other times, Hebrew or Yiddish phrases are simply transliterated into Roman characters, often when such phrases express shock or pain. In these cases, Katchor translates when the meaning of the text is important to his narrative or to characterization, and he transliterates to convey the particular feel of an exclamation in a given language when the literal meaning is less vital. But when Katchor writes Hebrew text in Hebrew characters [fig. 3; 59.5], the literal understanding of the text is less important than the recognition of its Jewish character, thanks to the visual function of the Hebrew alphabet. The reader doesn't need to be Hebrew-literate to recognize the balloon as some sort of speech in a foreign language, just as this panel from Joe Sacco's Palestine [fig. 4] is intelligible as an Arabic utterance whether or not the reader can make it out as "Allahu huwa akbar" ("God is great").