He takes issue with several aspects of YIVO orthography, including the way it renders the Latin suffix -ium (e.g., aquarium) and the use of two yods joined at the bottom (like the letter v) to represent double-vov. The most populous dialect is Mideastern (Polish) Yiddish, which covers what was Congress Poland, western Galicia, and much of the Hungarian lands.įrom lexicographer Alexander Harkavy in New York to Max Weinreich in Vilna, 1 September 1933, explaining that he was delayed in answering a letter from Weinreich because of an injury he sustained while boarding a tram. A version of its sound system became the basis for standard Theater Yiddish (while the literary and academic standard closely tracks the Lithuanian dialect of the north, minus a few famous exceptions). Southeastern Yiddish includes Volhynian, Podolian, and Bessarabian-Romanian varieties they are readily distinguishable from each other. The South (comprising perhaps three-quarters of all Yiddish speakers) is itself divided into two major subdialects: Southeastern (so-called Ukrainian) and Mideastern (so-called Polish) Yiddish. Its territory encompasses what is today Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, and portions of northeastern Poland, northern and eastern Ukraine, and western Russia. East European Yiddishmodern Yiddishcan first be divided into a North and a South. Northeastern Yiddish, the dialect of the North, is popularly called Lithuanian Yiddish (simply Litvish in Yiddish), and its speakers are known as Litvaks ( lítvakes). ∺ll native Yiddish spoken today derives from one (or a combining of several) of the East European dialects of the language. His discussion of Yiddish dialects can be particularly useful for translators Dovid Katz, a foremost Yiddishist, has a brilliant article in the Yivo Encylcopedia.on the history of Yiddish. The file on the Yiddish alphabet may be particularly useful to translators. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research for decades has been involved with standardization of Yiddish and the website has many useful files. ![]() Like all guidelines, this one stresses the importance of consistency. This document has much that is relevant to yizkor book translators. Ronald Doctor wrote a long file, Hebrew/Yiddish transliteration guidelines for use in Kremenets vital records, yizkor book and matzeva translations, which was written for use in his massive work on Kremenets but also had wider application to other projects. Your goal is to follow the vocabulary and phrasing of the author's choices as carefully as you can, in order to capture not just the basic meaning but the tone and the tam of the piece. The differences between the two worldswhich you do your best to bridgeturn translation into a balancing act. The reader of your translation will not be a teacher grading you by comparing the Yiddish and the English, side by side, but a researcher unable to read Yiddish who is relying on you to provide access to the material. Your role is that of an interpreter between two distinct cultural as well as linguistic worlds. In an expanded version (see in Reference section below), under the heading of Accuracy, she wrote the following on the role of translators. In 2004, Sonia Kovitz, Ph.D, wrote a set of guidelines for Yiddish translators. Therefore, the following Introductions to two sets of guidelines will provide some context. ![]() Therefore, it was decided to update and expand these guidelines.Ĭontext is important to understanding the issues involved in transliteration. However, it seems that over time the usage of these guidelines may have declined. Yizkor Book Guidelines for Translation/TransliterationĬompiled by Joyce Field and Jerrold Landauįor many years JewishGen has had guidelines on its website for transliteration/translation of Yiddish and Hebrew text into English for its Yizkor Book Project.
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