Fremde flantsungen oyf yidishn bodn / Fremde Pflanzen auf jiddischem Boden / Foreign Plants on Yiddish Soil

“Language for the poet is more than a vessel into which he pours his magic potion; it is the potion itself, the spell itself.” (Shmuel Niger)

How powerful is the spell of foreign poetry when translated into a minority language? The present volume is devoted to the ruthlessly self-critical reflections of Yiddish translators, critics, proofreaders, teachers and scholars of translation, chiefly in Polish and Soviet cultural spaces during the interwar period.

In their extensive translational and critical work, these translators and scholars furthered the development of Yiddish secular culture and its literature by exploring and creatively adopting new artistic forms and aesthetic concepts.

In Yiddish Warsaw, intellectuals reflected on their commitment to the language, discussed translational strategies, criticized the arbitrary character of publishers’ programs and urged them to take a more systematic approach. Soviet Yiddish scholars and writers applied the emergent Russian linguistic theory of translation to their own work. Critiques of literary translation, for example of works by Krylov, Pushkin and Twain, from a scholarly, philological and editorial point of view was also widespread in North America.

The volume contains 33 essays, beginning with a small selection on Yehoyesh’s celebrated translation of the Hebrew Bible into modern Yiddish.

"The present volume is devoted to translation criticism in Yiddish. The editors of this anthology have carefully selected an impressive and representative collection of articles by both prominent and lesser-known Yiddish literati of the 20th century who were either directly or indirectly involved in translation. Most of the articles were published during the interwar period in various newspapers and journals, in Poland and the Soviet Union, many of which are not easily accessible today. This meticulous compilation of sources into a single, comprehensive volume offers significant insights to any scholar working in the field." - Nathan Cohen, Center for Yiddish Studies　at the　Department of Literature of the Jewish People, Bar Ilan University

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"Daria Vakhrushova’s background article and the original Yiddish texts, edited and annotated for this volume, are an important contribution to the field of Yiddish studies. This much needed publication revises the argument proclaiming the decline of Yiddish in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Indeed, the Soviet literati had to disavow both their ancient Jewish tradition and modern nationalist aspirations due to ideological reasons. Still, they developed a rich and flexible literary language, which is evidenced by their outstanding translations of Russian and European poetry and prose." - Mikhail Krutikov, Forward, May 29, 2025