Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.090 August 18, 1994 1) Introduction (Avrom Itzchok Strauss) 2) Sons in kitchens (Jules Levin) 3) LCAAJ archives (Ellen Prince) 4) Recording Review - Voices of the Ghetto (Ellen Prince) 5) Musings on translations (Louis Fridhandler) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Aug 94 21:10:50 EDT From: 74722.1215@compuserve.com Subject: Introduction Nu? vos zoll ikh zogn? I am going to be 77 years old next month. After living with alle goyim for many years I returned to Baltimore, and moved into a condominium of all Jewish residents, 192 units. Hob ikh ungefangen reydn yiddish noch amol. Ikh reyd a proster yiddish. I am, I suppose, a secular Jew. I don't know my aleph, beys, so I can only read yiddish in transliteration. I am aware of the YIVO prescribed method of spelling, my 1964 version of The Encyclopedia Brittanica has Yiddish-English Dictioary which conforms to the YIVO style. Recently, in our Condo news letter, I wrote about a Sunday breakfast that condo had, I wrote it was "takeh a mekhiah", someone called me and told me I spelled it wrong. I think in yiddish anything goes in spelling and pronunciation. Avrom Itzchok 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Aug 1994 16:45:32 -0700 (PDT) From: JFLEVIN@UCRAC1.UCR.EDU Subject: Sons in kitchens How did sons learn kitchen yiddish? There is a sexist presumption in the question, but anyway... In the late 40's in Chicago I lived in a one-bdrm apt with my parents. One days when the weather was too inclement to play outside, where do you think I was? Sitting at the kitchen table and watching my Mom cook! I might have had a book in front of me, but that didn't stop my Mom from talking at me continually while she potchke'd around. Of course she would never let me help her or touch anything (except to lick the frosting), but curiously, when I left home to go to college and began living alone, I immediately knew how to cook, and am now considered a gourmet cook. The one problem in this story is that my mom, American- born, talked to me in English, unfortunately, but the point is, in tiny apts, when weather was terrible [not uncommon outside of Southern California 8-)], and there were bowls of frosting to lick, where do you suppose the Jewish boys were? Jules Levin 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Aug 1994 19:55:24 EDT From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: LCAAJ archives dovid, i had assumed--and more or less correctly it seems--that the or at least some of the interviews would be archived--and they do indeed contain running text. andrew, thanks for the reply and explanation. i wasn't demeaning regional variation or the study thereof. i was just thinking of how great it would be if i could, for example, pull out all relative clauses or passives or what-have-you uttered in the interviews, regardless of the dialect area of their speaker. now, i FULLY realize that all the relevant tagging possible is a VERY LONG job. that's why i suggested that it would be a real mitsve to get the interviews archived first, and THEN add whatever tagging is desired. that way, those of us interested in some particular thing can at least go search for ourselves, until such time as tagging plus automated searches can do it for us. in any event, i think it's great, however you go about it. ellen prince 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 Aug 1994 20:35:06 EDT From: ellen@central.cis.upenn.edu Subject: Recording Review - Voices of the Ghetto david gasser, thanks for telling us about this recording. it particularly interests me because i interviewed jacques grober about 10 years ago in paris because he was a former voice student of a singer i was researching, sarah gorby. i'm really delighted to see he's keeping up with his yiddish singing. do you know if the recording is available in the u.s.? one record/cassette that i believe is available and that might interest you is sarah gorby's 'unforgettable songs of the ghetto', a re-release by epic in israel of a rerelease by arion in paris of an original philips recording in paris, les inoubliables chants du ghetto de sarah gorby. i'm very sure it provided a large measure of the inspiration for grober's recording, plus it's very beautiful, imho. ellen prince 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Aug 94 23:57:22 EDT From: 74064.1661@compuserve.com Subject: Musings on translations Reviving the translation discussion of a few weeks ago. Yiddish writers have displayed a wide spectrum of attitudes toward translation of their work into languages that reach an audience far larger than the Yiddish-reading public. Regarding this, Max Erik (many years ago) compared Peretz and Sholem-Aleykhem in a very interesting article that relied for evidence largely on letters. The citation is: Erik, Maks: Sholem-Aleykhem un zayn iberzetser [Sholem Aleichem and His Translator], in Tsaytshrift far Yidisher Geshikhte, Demografye un Ekonomik, Literatur-Forshung, Shprakhvisnshaft un Etnografye (Minsk) 5 (1931) 79-88 [Yiddish & Russian]. When it came to having his work translated into Russian, Peretz was relaxed, granting the matter only casual attention to the point of negligence. Erik found evidence for a far different attitude in Sholem- Aleykhem. Sholem-Aleykhem was excitedly involved in all aspects of the proposed 1910 edition of a substantial portion of his work in Russian translation. He saw it as a major advance in his career, and thought of it as "hacking out a window, the first gap leading toward the gentile world." The thought of a possible artistic failure made him extremely anxious. Erik felt the fear was quite understandable in view of the difficulties posed by Sholem-Aleykhem's style and the dearth of experienced translators. Of special interest are Erik's comments on Sholem-Aleykhem's ideas regarding a translation problem noted by many. That is, devices have to be invented to render Tevye's double-language word play as he quotes a Hebrew posek and immediately repeats it Yiddish. He often mistranslates the Hebrew to make ironic comments in Yiddish. It's a daring high-wire act in the original, playing subtly and skilfully to the ear and Jewish memories. These instances are often impossible to translate without footnotes. The Russian translator offered Sholem-Aleykhem three possible ways of dealing with this: 1) quote the posek in Hebrew in a Latin transcription, and explain the Russian meaning in a footnote. 2) translate them immediately into Russian. 3) render them in stylized slavic as used in churches [Kirkhlekh-Slavish] followed by the Russian. The translator liked the first idea best. Sholem-Aleykhem hated it, told him to put the idea out of his head. Sholem-Aleykhem liked the third idea best. Further, in one of the letters quoted, Sholem-Aleykhem demanded that all terms of religious significance be taken out. That is, terms such as Kidesh, Kadish, Yortsayt, Tfiln, Mezuze, Mikve, Mayrev, Tales Kotn. Given the significant compromises allowed by Sholem-Aleykhem, I don't feel so bad about the compromises I have occasionally made in translating his work into English. I see no overarching principle. One must invent case by case. I have occasionally changed paragraph order, sentence order, even idea order, because English style seemed to demand it. Further, Sholem-Aleykhem sometimes uses a string of adjectives which sound wonderful in Yiddish with each adjective adding to the fine tuning of the atmosphere. However, in English, that usually sounds like a quotation from a thesaurus entry, awkwardly, boringly repetitious. My solution? Ruthlessly chop off some adjectives. Maybe not the best solution, but the only one I could devise. Puns and spoonerisms make special, difficult demands on the translator. Anybody else like to share translation experiences? BTW I just remembered another line from Sholem Secunda's "Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn." Bay mir bistu git, bay mir hostu "it" [So the words contained at least one English word in the original. This was composed during the Clara Bow era. Clara Bow was known as the "it" girl.] Louis Fridhandler ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.090 A Table of Contents is now available via anonymous ftp, along with weekly updates. Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files Archives available via gopher on: gopher.cic.net Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send articles to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@mail.trincoll.edu