EAJS Laboratory Report. ‘Yiddish Language and Culture. A Relay Station of Modernity and Lieu de Mémoire of Postmodernity’. University of Vienna. February 2017

EAJS Programme in European Jewish Studies 2016/17

REPORT

Yiddish Language and Culture. A Relay Station of Modernity and Lieu de Mémoire of Postmodernity

University of Vienna, 13th to 14th February 2017

Conveners: Dr Olaf Terpitz (Department of Slavonic Studies/ DK Galizien, University of Vienna) and Marianne Windsperger (Department of German Studies, University of Vienna)

Co-organiser: Prof. Gerhard Langer (Department of Judaic Studies, University of Vienna)

Introduction

In current models and reflections on “new world literatures,” translation plays a crucial role on the level of experience as well as in theoretical reflections (the translational turn). Yiddish literature and culture have been and are shaped by processes of encounter, transfer and transmission to a particularly high degree (e.g. Jewish tradition, politics of translation). This laboratory was aimed at confronting and expanding existing notions of translation in diverse fields of Yiddish cultural production, including:

Translation of texts: focusing on translation processes and its actors
Literary criticism
Translational Literature (critical reflection on transnational literatures; translating Holocaust literature, the limits of translation)
Mediality: transfer of genre and media change
Perception of Yiddish

Applying current theoretical assumptions to Yiddish literature in historical and contemporary perspectives, we intended to draw together various realms of Yiddish Studies. This laboratory aimed to extrapolate the multifold cultural interactions that have made Yiddish culture a relay station of Modernity and a lieu de mémoire of Postmodernity.

Link for Event Poster

Event Rationale

Given the central role of Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture to Jewish Studies in general, our aim was to draw together current edge methodologies and theory in the field of World literatures and translation. The key questions of the laboratory emerged from previous cooperations and ongoing exchanges between the involved researchers (e.g. the workshop at the ICLA 2016 on “Places and Media of Encounters. Transfer, Mediality and Situativity of Jewish Literatures,” and the lecture series on Yiddish Literature and Language at the University of Vienna during the summer term 2016). On the one hand the format of the laboratory enabled us to discuss ongoing research projects. On the other hand, through the pre-circulation and preparation of texts prior to the event, the dialogical structure of the sessions, and the roundtable discussion, we identified, addressed and highlighted new questions and future fields of research. Furthermore, the laboratory has strengthened and expanded the network of Yiddish scholars across Europe, and positions the University of Vienna as a hub for Yiddish Literature and Language Studies.

Event programme

Overview

The structure of the laboratory consisted of five panel sessions and one roundtable discussion. They centred around topical, methodological and theoretical issues of translation. In order to enable productive and lively discussion, papers and material were circulated among the participants in advance. All sessions included junior and senior scholars, one discussant and one chair. The task of the discussant was to bring in his own expertise, to comment on the papers, to formulate overarching questions and to open up the discussion. All participants had 15 minutes for their respective presentation leaving an hour for discussion, allowing an extensive exchange between the panellists and the audience. In total there were five two-hour sessions and a 2.5-hour roundtable. The laboratory was opened by a welcome address of Melanie Malzahn, dean of the Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies, and a thematic introduction by the conveners. Providing a book table, we offered the possibility for the participants to showcase their own publications related to Yiddish and translation, or their own translations. The Theodor Kramer publishing house also provided books for the book table, primarily translations from Yiddish into German. The laboratory was attended by an audience numbering around thirty to fifty listeners.

Session 1: Strategies of Translation

The first session was dedicated to the general discussion of different strategies shaping translation processes into Yiddish and from Yiddish.

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska (University of Lublin) focussed on the Americanization of Polish Jewish literary and documentary texts. She highlighted tendencies in American translations, such as transforming topographical and cultural details of concrete Polish places into rather mythical places (embellishment and distortion). Augusta Radosav Costiuc (Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca) introduced us to her approach of translating Itzik Manger’s poems into Romanian. She discussed her choices as translator concerning the preservation of rhythm, melody and the aesthetic effects of the original, basing her analysis on the theoretical reflections of Umberto Eco. Rachel Wamsley (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) turned in her contribution to the “Shmuel Bukh” to show how the biblical past (the story of David) was translated into Modernity. She outlined the process of poetic historicization, providing the early modern reader with a Yiddish chivalric romance.

Session 2: The Translator

The following session centred on the figure and the task of the translator, his embeddedness in specific knowledge cultures and cultural, political and commercial interests.

In his talk Daniel Kennedy (Maison de la culture Yiddish – Bibliothèque Medem) showcased the translational work of Hersh D. Nomberg who aimed at translating important works of world literature into Yiddish. Nomberg’s oeuvre encompassed oriental classics such as Hafiz and Tagore, drawing the Yiddish reader’s attention to hitherto lesser recognised literatures as well as joining in the contemporary orient – occident debate. Moreover, Kennedy analysed how Nomberg’s translations influenced his own writing. Khayke Beruriah Wiegand (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies) considered in her contribution the translational gap between the Yiddish writer Bashevis and his American construct I.B. Singer. She argued that with his practice of supervising the work of his co-translators, translational works were produced that met the expectations of the American reader, but lost the aesthetical qualities of the Yiddish originals. Holger Nath (University of Regensburg) illuminated the work of Nokhem Shtif who pursued his project of standardizing Yiddish also by means of translation. Nath focussed especially on two translations from German and Russian into Yiddish from the realms of education and historiography; those areas being of crucial importance to the conception of and discourse on national identity at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Thomas Soxberger (Vienna) finally presented reflections on Josef Leftwich as a mediator or even an “ambassador of Yiddish literature” to the English reader. Leftwich intended both to transmit Yiddish culture to future Jewish generations and to introduce it to the non-Jewish world.

Session 3: Roundtable: Concepts of Translation

The three participants of the roundtable discussed various concepts of translation, basing their analysis and argumentation on specific examples in different media settings, be it literature, the arts or music.

Sarah Ponichtera (YIVO New York) argued that Louis Zukofsky shaped his poetics of translation by integrating translated passages from Yiddish into his American poetry. He thus created a highly complex poetic language that had the power to destabilize notions of the foreign and the familiar. Susanne Marten-Finnis (University of Portsmouth) portrayed the illustrated Yiddish magazine of arts and letters Milgroym, and the impact of Rachel Wischnitzer as editor on the connection of cosmopolitanism, translation and the mediation of art. She argued that Wischnitzer provided with her magazine a platform where she negotiated the global to share it with a national audience. The third roundtable participant Benjy Fox-Rosen (Vienna/ Cluj-Napoca), a musician, addressed in his contribution the concept of embodied translation, i.e. how to perform Yiddish songs for a non-Yiddish speaking audience. He took up different forms of connections between translation and performance, and outlined how the symbolic meaning of Yiddish can be subverted by the use of non-verbal material and the productive use of misunderstandings.

Session 4: Translation and Discourse

The fourth session was dedicated to the relation between translation and discourse, i.e. to what degree and how translations are dependent on current debates or are influenced by them.

Jeffrey Grossman (University of Virginia) discussed how the German translations of the Yiddish writings of Peretz or Sholem Aleichem were first received by the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums as a form of “ghetto writing”, producing thus on the one hand forms of misrecognition, on the other facilitating the dissemination of parts of Yiddish literature and culture among German readers. Looking at Argentina, Mariusz Kałczewiak (Tel Aviv University/Justus Liebig University Giessen) investigated in his contribution how translations from Yiddish into Spanish served for activists such as Salomón Resnick as a means to transmit Jewish culture to the younger generation, to ensure cultural continuity, to counter both assimilation tendencies and antisemitism, and to connect Argentinian Jews with the global Yiddishland. Sasha Senderovich (University of Colorado Boulder), who participated via skype, elaborated on the translation resp. reception history of Dovid Bergelson’s novel “Judgement”. Published in 1926-1927, it was regarded by contemporary Soviet critics as a questionable attempt of Bergelson to gain entry into the Soviet Union and Soviet literature, and by American critics after the Second World War as an endorsement of the Bolshevik regime and the surrender of his artistic integrity. Trapped in this reception gap the novel was only translated into English in 2017. Concluding the session, Irad Ben Isaak (Tel Aviv University) turned to the translation history of Sholem Aleichem’s novel Menachem Mendl into Hebrew. He outlined the discursive contexts of the three existing translations: the revival of Hebrew (translation by Y.D. Berkowicz) at the beginning of the 20^th century, Yiddish as a vanishing language at the end of the 20^th century (translation by Ariel Aharoni), and the presence of Yiddish traces in contemporary Hebrew (translation by Beni Mer). The respective discourse thus informed and shaped the translation immensely.

Session 5: Transgenerational Continuity

The fifth session looked into the central role of translation in transmitting cultural knowledge and thus enabling continuity and cohesion.

Ilay Halpern (Potsdam University) dedicated his presentation to the Polish Jewish writer Adolf Rudnicki whose Polish Holocaust prose was re-claimed and salvaged for future generations by Lili Berger’s Yiddish translation. In this way Halpern addressed the link between processes of translation and canonization. Taking up on the pedagogical realm Yehuda Bitty (Herzog Academic College) presented ideas on translation in American Jewish textbooks. Monika Polit (University of Warsaw) discussed the historical figure of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski and the highly ambivalent image of him in Yiddish testimonies and contemporary Holocaust fiction, based on those testimonies.

Session 6: Actualisation in Media

The last session dealt with translational phenomena in media other than texts.

Rebecca Margolis (University of Ottawa) discussed the various strategies of subtitling in contemporary Yiddish films and series, thus highlighting the relationship between script and spoken language, addressing the agency of the audience and extrapolating the challenges connected to film productions in multi-lingual settings. Our last presenter, Agnieszka Legutko (Columbia University), offered a comparative analysis of the literary, film and theatre representations of the figures dybbuk and golem. She interpreted those postmodernist reinventions of Yiddish culture or re-mediations as mistranslation.

Summary

The laboratory was composed of six sessions in total, five panel sessions and one roundtable discussion. They centred around the general topic of the event: the role of translation in/for Yiddish language and culture in Modernity and Postmodernity. The participants were of various academic ages and represented the manifold institutions and research areas relevant to the heterogeneous field of Yiddish studies. The laboratory was internationally composed with participants from Eastern Europe (Romania, Poland), Central and Western Europe (Austria, Germany, the UK, France), Israel, the USA, Canada.

The structure of the laboratory enabled lively and extensive discussions guided by the discussants, and created an atmosphere where scholars, translators and musicians in the field of Yiddish studies could share their thoughts, reflections and arguments.

Though the individual presentations focused on specific questions and aspects, the discussions during the workshop highlighted the following overarching issues:

Social, political and economic dimension of translation
Translation and canonization of texts
Translation and concepts of authorship
Performative aspects of translation
Translation and transfer of cultural knowledge
Visualization of processes of translation in different media
Role of translation for cultural continuity of a language
Translation practice as a mirror of the relationship between Yiddish and World Literature

Outcomes

Networking: The laboratory provided an outstanding occasion for translators, educators, musicians and scholars in the fields of Yiddish Studies, Jewish Studies, Comparative Literature, Slavonic Literatures, Medieval Studies, German Studies, History, and Cultural Studies, to share their translational experiences and theoretical approaches, and to discuss perspectives and future collaborations in the field. Participants observed that the inter-disciplinarity and the internationality of the event made it very productive.

Training of early career researchers: The EAJS grant supported the participation of 14 early career scholars in attending the laboratory, and offered the possibility for academic training, networking, and (for some of them their first) publication.

Outputs

Two publications are planned. First, selected contributions will be published in a special issue of the peer reviewed online journal “In geveb”. Second, an edited volume will be published with Boehlau (book series “Schriften des Centrums für Jüdische Studien”), co-edited by the conveners. The laboratory convincingly demonstrated the importance and relevance of the event’s topic for Yiddish, Comparative and Cultural Studies. Future workshops and co-operations will take up questions and issues raised during the laboratory.

Publicity

The event was publicized and the call for papers circulated through the following channels:

European Association for Jewish Studies (newsflash, website)
H-Judaic
H-Soz-Kult
In geveb
Yiddish Sources
Center for Jewish Studies Berlin Brandenburg
Mailing lists of the University of Vienna (Departments of Slavonic Studies, German Studies, Judaic Studies; Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies)

As well as the event page on the University of Vienna website: http://yiddish-laboratory.univie.ac.at

Conference reports will be published in “In geveb. A Journal of Yiddish Studies,” and “Zwischenwelt. Zeitschrift für Kultur des Exils und des Widerstands”.

Programme

Time: February 13 – 14, 2017

Location: Übungsraum 1, Department of German Studies, University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1, 1010 Wien

Organisers: Olaf Terpitz and Marianne Windsperger

February 13, 2017

9.00 – 9.30 am

Welcoming address Melanie Malzahn, Dean of the Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies

Introduction Olaf Terpitz and Marianne Windsperger (University of Vienna)

9.30 – 11.30 am

Strategies of Translation

Chair: Olaf Terpitz// Discussant: Katrin Janz-Wenig (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin): Coffee or Chicken Soup? The Americanization of Polish Jewish Space in Translations of Yiddish Literature into English

Augusta Costiuc Radosav (Babeş-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca): “Literarishe reveransn”. Yiddish Translation as Negotiation

Rachel Wamsley (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Translating for Modernity. “Shmuel bukh” and Historical Imagination

11.30 am – 1.30 pm Break

1.30 – 3.30 pm

The Translator

Chair: Marianne Windsperger// Discussant: Olaf Terpitz

Daniel Kennedy (Maison de la culture Yiddish-Bibliothèque Medem): Nomberg the Translator and Asian Literature in Yiddish Translation

Khayke Beruriah Wiegand (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies): The Yiddish Bashevis and His American Construct I.B. Singer. Questions of Language, Translation and Betrayal

Holger Nath (University of Regensburg): Me, Yiddish, and Everybody Else. Nokhem Shtif as Translator and Stylist

Thomas Soxberger (Vienna): Josef Leftwich. The Translator as “Ambassador of Yiddish Literature”

3.30 – 4 pm Break

4 – 6.30 pm

Roundtable: Concepts of Translation

Chair: Gerhard Langer (University of Vienna)// Discussant: Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin)

Sarah Ponichtera (YIVO, New York): Louis Zukofsky. Building a Poetics of Translation

Susanne Marten-Finnis (University of Portsmouth): Cosmopolitanism, Translation and the Mediation of Art. Rachel Wischnitzer’s Milgroym as a Pathway Towards the Global Museum

Benjy Fox-Rosen (Vienna/ Cluj-Napoca): Embodied translation? Reflections on Performing Yiddish for Non-Yiddish-speaking Audiences

7 pm Dinner

February 14, 2017

9 – 11.00 am

Translation and Discourse

Chair: Marianne Windsperger// Discussant: Olaf Terpitz

Jeffrey Grossman (University of Virginia): From Ghetto Literature to Yiddish in Translation

Mariusz Kałczewiak (Tel Aviv University/ Justus Liebig University Giessen): “Let them understand!” Argentinian Translations from Yiddish and Expanding the Borders of Jewishness

Sasha Senderovich (University of Colorado Boulder): Soviet Yiddish Literature and the Politics of Translation

Irad Ben Isaak (Tel Aviv University): Explaining the Yiddishland to Israelis. Beni Mer’s Translation of “Menachem Mendl”

11 – 11.30 am Break

11.30 am – 1.30 pm

Transgenerational Continuity

Chair: Olaf Terpitz// Discussant: Marianne Windsperger

Ilay Halpern (Potsdam University): Redeeming the Polish Jewish Author through Yiddish Translation. Lili Berger’s Translation of Adolf Rudnicki’s Holocaust Prose

Yehuda Bitty (Herzog Academic College): Transmission and Identity. American Jewish Immigrant Textbooks in the Early Twentieth Century

Monika Polit (University of Warsaw): Yiddish Holocaust Testimonies

1.30 – 2.30 pm Break

2.30 – 4.30 pm

Actualisation in Media

Chair: Marianne Windsperger// Discussant: Klaus Davidowicz

Rebecca Margolis (University of Ottawa): “Me hert nisht!”. Subtitles and Contemporary Yiddish Film

Agnieszka Legutko (Columbia University): Dybbuks and Golems in Mistranslation. The Postmodernist Reinvention of Yiddish Culture

Concluding Remarks

Event Financed by the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS).

Further cooperation partners were the Institute for Jewish Studies, Doktoratskolleg Galizien (both University of Vienna), the IKG – the Viennese Jewish Community, and the Vienna Convention Bureau.