A Cambodian translator has coined a new Khmer term for the word “Holocaust” for use in new Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) publications, including her Khmer-language translation of a memoir by a Holocaust survivor that was released in Phnom Penh on 19 July 2019.
Sovicheth Meta is a 21-year-old translator and researcher at DC-Cam, which catalogues historical materials from the genocidal Khmer Rouge period from 1975 to 1979. She said she translated “Holocaust,” which refers to the mass murder and genocide of more than 6 million Jews by the German Nazi regime in the 1940s, as the Khmer “bochea phleung,” which means to “sacrifice by fire.”