For Psychoanalytic Perspectives’ special issue on psychoanalysis and translation, the author contemplates the essence of translation and its role in facilitating an encounter with the other, under the difficult circumstances of the last year of war in Israel and Gaza. The paper explores the relationship between war, trauma, militarization, and dehumanization as well as the way these come up in the evolving Hebrew language and the attempt to faithfully translate it for external readers. These qualities of translation as potential humanization are illustrated and explored through literature, personal experience, and theoretical thinking on dehumanization and the hidden potencies of language.